Rarely Seen Richmond

A digital collection of over 600 postcard images of Richmond, most dating from 1900-1930, from the James Branch Cabell Library Special Collections and Archives. The intent of the collection is to help document early twentieth century Richmond by displaying a unique collection of images of the city. Many of these images include buildings and structures that either no longer exist or have since been altered. The subject matter of these postcards also lends insight into the social and cultural attitudes of those times. Postcards began to be widely used in the United States soon after the passage of the Private Mailing Card Act in 1898. It freed private publishers from what was considered unfair competition from government issued cards. In the next few years the demand for postcards grew as a craze for collecting them spread throughout the country. Dozens of postcard printers, both American and European, began producing postcard views. This "golden age" of postcard publishing and collecting lasted from 1898 through 1912 when thousands of cards were produced, mailed, and collected by the public. According to figures issued by the U.S. Post Office for fiscal year 1907-1908, 677,777,798 postcards were mailed in the United States in that year. Though the craze for postcards diminished by the time World War I began, postcards continued to be published and collected. One estimate has put the number of Richmond, Virginia postcard views at 2,000. Many of the postcards in this collection were colorized from original black and white photographs. For more information about Virginia postcard history, see Kelly Henderson, "The Art of the View: Picture Postcards of Virginia, 1900-1925," Virginia Cavalcade, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Autumn 1990), 66-73. VCU Libraries originally digitized this collection in 2000. The postcards were scanned by Archivist Ray Bonis, and the metadata was generated by Bonis and then-head of Library Information Services Jimmy Ghaphery. Additional metadata was supplied by Metadata Librarian Mary Anne Dyer in 2008.