“Chicago Tonight” also posted a gallery of some of the postcard art featured in Picturing Illinois.

Postcards stimulate reference to the past in ways more powerful than words.  This idyllic view of a shaded residential street in Danville’s upscale past is true to the scene but it also evokes an idealized home place, one of quiet, one blending nature with stately architecture.  This particular view also references—for those wishing to delve further—the neighborhood where Illinois’ once powerful Speaker of the House lived, Uncle Joe Cannon. Fact, memory, and feeling are all embedded in my favorite postcard from Picturing Illinois.  

Figure 142, North Vermilion Street, Danville, ca. 1910. C. T. [Curt Teich] American Art (#R-20740).

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, and here.

Figure 131 on page 133 of Picturing Illinois shows Memorial Stadium on the University of Illinois campus.  But, like so many cards, the image has been altered to improve its customer appeal.  In the background mountains have been added.  In the middle ground a lake appears.  And the card’s caption reads: “Memorial Stadium, University of Illinois, Chicago, Ill.”  It is not merely a mistake.  As we speculate in the text it appears to be symptomatic of the often smug Chicago attitude toward the larger State of Illinois—the emotion that everything worthwhile in Illinois must be in the big city.  And yet the big city wouldn’t be big if it weren’t for the farms, small towns, and lesser cities “downstate” and elsewhere throughout Chicago’s Midwest hinterland.  Even postcard images deserve critical thought.

Credit: Memorial Stadium, University of Illinois, Champaign, Gerson Brothers (#14779), Chicago.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Cullom, 1914.  No publisher given.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, and here.

Savanna, ca. 1910. A. O. Elliott (#U.S. 502), Savanna, Ill.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, and here.

The University of Chicago, ca. 1935. Max Rigot Selling Co., Chicago (#272); C. T. American Art. Courtesy of Curt Teich.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here, here,  here, here, here, and here.

The A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company, Decatur, ca. 1940. Curt Teich & Co., Chicago; C. T. American Art; Decatur News Agency, Decatur, Ill.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here,  here, here, here, and here.

Soldier Field, ca. 1930. American Colortype (#307), Chicago and New York.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here,  here, here, here, and here.

President William Howard Taft’s campaign train, Champaign, 1912.

Snapshot photo, privately printed on postcard paper.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here, here, and here.

Color-View Inc. (#63769-B), Rockford, Ill.; Ektachrome by Joe E. Clark; Dexter Press, West Nyack, N.Y.

Taken from Picturing Illinois: Twentieth-Century Postcard Art from Chicago to Cairo (University of Illinois Press, October 2012).  Previous postcards here, here, and here.