Still Around after 188 Years (Sort of)

The picture on the front of this post card shows what Greylock Station

looked like prior to March 1, 1907. Greylock Station is located in North Adams, MA (almost as far north and west in Massachusetts as one can go) which is less than an hour east of Albany, New York. At the time of this picture the station was on the Boston & Maine Railroad line. The Boston & Maine (B&MRR) came into existence on March 15, 1833 when the Andover and Wilmington Railroad received a charter to build a railroad joining the two cities to each other. On June 27, 1835, the Boston and Maine Railroad of New Hampshire was chartered. The B&MRR no longer operates as the namesake railroad. At the time, it was the largest of New England's railroads and for over 180 years has served the territory well. During the company's height it maintained more than 2,000 miles with 25,000 employees. Its by-line was “Route of the Minute Man”. This was a reflection of the civilians who were at the ready to defeat the British in the Revolutionary War. It covered the state of Massachusetts north and west from its home base of Boston. Today's B&MRR is much different than the one of last century. What is left of its historic network is operated by Pan Am Railways, previously known as Guilford Rail System. That would make the railroad over 188 years old.

I can only assume that the post card was printed and published by the Railroad itself. Their logo appears at the bottom right-hand corner of the front of the card. This is the back of the card and it tells me that it was printed before March 1, 1907. Up until this date only the address could be written on the back of the post card. You can see that reminder in the bottom left-hand side of the card. So this post card is over 114 years old! And it is in excellent shape.

Florida East Coast Railroad continued...

The Overseas Railroad was an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway

to Key West, located 128 miles beyond the end of the Florida peninsula. Work on the line started in 1905 and was completed in 1912; the line was in daily passenger and freight service until its destruction by a hurricane in 1935. My wife and I joke a lot about cars driving down the road for kilometers with their turn signals on. We usually alert the other person by saying,"Guess he's goin' to Florida." Then the other person knows to look for a car with continuous turn signalling happening. I have to admit that she has asked me if I was going to Florida a couple of times. Today's blog post is taking us to Florida without the benefit of an ongoing turn signal. We are looking at three of my seven post cards that highlight the Florida East Railway's Long Key Viaduct. I will first tell you the story, then talk about the publisher of each post card at the end. I will simply intersperse the fronts of the post cards through the narrative as taken mostly from Wikipedia. The

construction problems were formidable; labor turnover was frequent and the cost was prohibitive. The first portion of the line, from Homestead to Key Largo, was across swamp land. Thankfully, the dredging of the drainage canals to clear the swamps provided the material to build up the roadbed. Worse than any other challenge was the weather: a hurricane in September 1906 destroyed the initial work on the Long Key Viaduct and killed more than 100 laborers. Hurricanes in 1909 and 1910 destroyed much of the completed railroad. After these hurricanes, work resumed at a faster pace — The owner of the railroad was 80 years old and wanted to ride all the way to Key West on his railroad. The completion of Seven Mile Bridge assured many that the line would soon be completed. Henry Flagler, by then blind, arrived in Key West on January 22, 1912, aboard his private rail car "Rambler", telling a welcoming crowd, “Now I can die happy. My dream is fulfilled.” Regular service on the 156-mile extension — dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" — began the following day, with through sleepers between New York and Key West with connections at Key West for passenger steamers and car ferries bound for Havana. Flagler died less than 18 months later in May 1913.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane washed away approximately 40 miles of the Middle Keys section of the line. In addition, the Long Key Fishing Camp was destroyed, along with a rescue train which was — with the exception of locomotive #447 — overturned by the storm surge at Islamorada, Florida. With Flagler gone, the railroad was unwilling to repair a line that had never repaid its construction cost — an unknown figure. It was later determined that the total cost of what had been derisively nicknamed "Flagler's Folly" exceeded $50 million ($1.31 billion today), all from his personal fortune.

The top post card, above was mailed in 1914, soon after the viaduct opened. It was published by the H. S. Kress Company. A publisher and large distributor of postcards through their national chain of Five & Dime stores. They were purchased by Genesco in 1964 who slowly began shutting the business down.

The middle post card was published by the Leighton & Valentine Company

out of New York City. Hugh C. Leighton was a printer and major publisher of national view-cards, especially scenes of New England. They printed most of their cards in four distinct styles employing halftone lithography. Most used a simple soft yet highly recognizable RGB pallet. While some cards were printed at their plant in the U.S. most were manufactured in Frankfort, Germany. Almost all their cards were numbered. They merged with Valentine & Sons in 1909.

The last of the post cards was published by the E.C. Kropp Company:

a publisher and printer that began producing chromolithographic souvenir cards and private mailing cards in 1898 under the name Kropp. These cards were of much higher quality than those that would printed under the E.C. Kropp name. They became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907 and produced large numbers of national view-cards and other subjects. Their latter linen cards had a noticeably fine grain. Sold to L.L. Cook in 1956 and they are now part of the GAF Corp. U.S. This post card is an excellent example of a linen post card. The texture and weight of the card are obvious when one holds it and holds it up to the light. I hope you can see the texture in this close-up:

The Passenger Service is Gone, but the Railroad Still Exists

The two trains pictured on the front of this post card are the passenger

service ancestors of a railroad that still exists today. The Florida East Coast Railroad does not carry passengers any more. The following information is taken directly from their website: https://fecrwy.com/ The Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) is a Class II regional railroad that owns all of the 351-mile mainline track from Jacksonville, FL, down to Miami. It is the exclusive rail provider for PortMiami, Port Everglades and Port of Palm Beach. FEC Railway connects to the national railway system in Jacksonville, allowing it to provide rail service in and out of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina, into and out of Florida’s east coast. Based in Jacksonville, FEC provides end-to-end intermodal and carload solutions to customers who demand cost-effective and premium quality transportation solutions. This is the history of the railroad that I found in Wikipedia: When Flagler returned to Florida, in 1885 he began building a grand St. Augustine hotel, the Ponce de Leon Hotel. Flagler realized that the key to developing Florida was a solid transportation system, and consequently purchased the 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax River Railway (JStA&HR) on December 31, 1885. He also discovered that a major problem facing the existing Florida railway systems was that each operated on different gauge systems, making interconnection impossible. He converted the line to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge in 1890 and the small operation was incorporated in 1892. Flagler next purchased three additional existing railroads: the St. John's Railway, the St. Augustine and Palatka Railway, and the St. Johns and Halifax River Railway so that he could provide extended rail service on standard gauge tracks. By 1894, Flagler's railroad system reached what is today known as West Palm Beach. On September 7, 1895, the name of Flagler's system was changed from the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indian River Railway Company to the Florida East Coast Railway Company and incorporated. On April 15, 1896, track reached Biscayne Bay, the site of present-day downtown Miami. At the time, it was a small settlement of less than 50 inhabitants. When the town incorporated, on July 28, 1896, its citizens wanted to honor the man responsible for the city's development by naming it Flagler. He declined the honor, persuading them to retain its old Indian name, Miami. I have posted about the Florida East Coast Railroad in the past. But, that was back in 2015. Next week I will re-post that episode of this blog's history.

The post card was printed by the Colorpicture Company based in Boston, Mass. It was a major publisher and printer of linen view-cards of the United States based in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts between 1938 and 1969. They later went on to publish photochromes and small spiral bound picture booklets under the name trade name Plastichrome in the 1950's.

Bridge, What Bridge?

The information about the bridge on the front of this post card was taken from this website: https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/507 The river that lent its name to Spokane has also been a barrier to the development of the city. No sooner was Spokane established than city fathers looked for places to bridge the raging currents. Today’s Monroe Street Bridge, a Spokane landmark, is the third bridge on this site.

The first Monroe Street Bridge was constructed of wood and built with horses and wagons in mind. The city, the Cable Railway Company, and property owners along Monroe Street split the cost of $42,500.00 to build the bridge. A new Monroe Street Bridge constructed of steel was completed in 1890. The steel bridge represented a step towards modernity, and was completed just in time to accommodate an unprecedented time of expansion for the city. The bridge boasted updates such as overhead lighting and the ability to accommodate doubled-tracked streetcars. But the new bridge soon became a source of controversy. It was immediately apparent that the bridge vibrated heavily, perhaps dangerously, with any sort of traffic. In 1905 the bridge was deemed unsafe by National Good Roads Association, and the next year a bridge expert labeled the bridge an accident waiting to happen: “Should a street car run off the track, or a bunch of steers be driven over it, the whole thing might collapse.” In 1907 the elephants of the Ringling Brother’s Circus refused to walk across the shaky span. Three years later the south side of the bridge collapsed after a mudslide. Spokane had plenty of trouble with its bridges in those days. In 1915, the Division Street Bridge collapsed, dropping a street car into the river resulting in 5 deaths and twelve injuries. These tragedies fueled an intense demand for safer concrete-arch bridges. A grand new Monroe Street Bridge was designed by Spokane City Engineer John Chester Ralston, and Spokane’s most celebrated architects: Kirtland K. Cutter and Karl G. Malmgren. Construction over the 140-feet deep and 1,500 feet wide gorge was challenged by severe windstorms, high water levels, and swift-moving currents. Two laborers died and over fifty were injured. Ralston was removed from the project after he was accused of stealing the design from Rocky River Bridge in Cleveland, and replaced by his assistant. Today’s Monroe Street Bridge opened November 23, 1911 with over 3,000 Spokane citizens on hand to celebrate. It was the world’s largest concrete arch-bridge. In 1914, just a few years after completion of this visual landmark, the city fathers permitted a railroad bridge to be built right over the top of it, marring the beauty of the structure. The Great Northern Railroad bridge remained in place for over half a century, until it was removed as part of the preparations for Expo 74. Today the Monroe Street Bridge today looks very much as it did in 1911, thanks to the removal of the railroad bridge and a 2003-2005 reconstruction project. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, all but the central span of the bridge was demolished and completely reconstructed starting in 2003. Reconstruction was necessary because by the 1990s the bridge had begun to drop large chucks of concrete into the river below. The rebuilding preserved the structural features from the original 1911 design, including Cutter and Malmgren’s life-size buffalo skulls, wagon wheels, wagon pavilions, and chain handrails that embody the pioneer spirit of Spokane’s earliest settlers. The bridge reopened in September 2005.

The post card was printed by Metropolitan MetroCraft (1939 – 1984) a major printer of linen and photochrome postcards displaying a variety of subjects. They also printed postcards for many other publishers. A good number of Metrocraft’s early photochrome postcards retained the use of retouchers that had worked on their linens. These cards have a very distinct look before they went over to a completely uniform photographic means of natural color reproduction. The information about the publisher of this post card was taken from this website: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/aug/08/then-and-now-john-w-graham-and-co/ John W. Graham, born 1860 in Rockport, Indiana, knew how to sell. He delivered newspapers, sold apples on the street with his brother James and helped his dad trade farm animals up and down the Ohio River. At the age of 10, he set up a little table in a general store where he sold tablets, ink and writing paper. While working in a Minneapolis stationery store in 1887, he read about a promising Western boomtown in the Washington territory. He stepped off the train in Spokane in 1888. The rustic town didn’t appeal to him, so he decided to hop back on the evening train and go to Seattle. But he had dropped two shirts at a Chinese laundry and he had to stay until the next day to get them back. The delay changed his mind and he took a job in the stationery shop of Sylvester Heath. Within a year, Heath’s shop was burned to the ground in Spokane’s great fire in August of 1889. Heath decided not to rebuild, so Graham set up a tent on the ashes of Heath’s store and went into business. For the next 80 years, John W. Graham and Co. was Spokane’s place to buy books, magazines, stationery, art and office supplies, cameras and film, paint, wallpaper, furniture and gifts. Graham’s slogan was “If it’s made of paper, we have it.” Graham’s store was first located in the Great Eastern Building until it was destroyed by fire in 1898. The next location, on the 700 block of West Sprague Avenue, extending to First Avenue on the building’s upper floors, was the store’s most enduring location. Historian Carolyn Hage Nunemaker, in her book of Spokane photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, said Graham’s was five stories of open showrooms and interesting nooks and crannies. “A stranger wandering in might have gotten lost in the peculiar arrangement, but those of us who knew its secrets felt comfortably familiar there,” she wrote. For many years, Graham’s even had the largest toy department in Spokane. John Graham died of a heart attack in June 1941 at the age of 81. A group of his employees bought the business from his estate in 1951. The business stayed in the old building until 1973, when the structure was torn down to make way for the Washington Trust Bank building. The store moved to a smaller location at Riverside Avenue and Stevens Street for a few years, and was bought out by Portland-based bookseller J.K. Gill Co. around 1980.