Antique Postcards Provide a Window to Old Boston

Antique Postcards, $7-$20

Located inside a glass case on the far end of Lou Desautels' shop sits two piles of postcards.

But not just any postcards, mind you: these are postcards from the Boston area that are just over a century old, making them true antiques (i.e., not just ‘vintage’).

The cards were collected by an outside source, but quite a few of them are addressed to places right on Beacon Hill, in and around Charles Street. And whereas oftentimes antique dealers are only able to give you an estimate as to an item’s age, many of the cards still have evidence – the original time and date stamp from the postal service on the back. All of the cards photographed here are from between 1901 and 1910; postage was just a penny.

Picture postcards evolved in the latter half of the 19th century, and the first to be developed in the U.S. was by the Morgan Envelope Company in Springfield. Still, the postal service maintained a monopoly on the sale of the cards until 1898, and a restriction still existed on the term ‘postcard’ for another two years. Until 1907, the cards were designed so that people had to write on the front, usually below the image.

Many of the cards at Boston Antiques have been sleeved in plastic to preserve the corners and the imagery.  But the coolest thing about them is that they’re true artifacts — remnants of a burgeoning tourism industry and a keen perspective on what sections of the city looked like a century ago.