They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and long before e-mail and cell phone cameras, postcards were the way you let the folks back at home know you were alive and well, and wished they were here.
A century ago, postcards weren't the tacky prints you find at the mall today. They were small works of art - hand colorized photographs or detailed illustrations - and they captured just about everything a city had to offer.
Local historian and writer Larry Widen gathered 250 of his favorites in his new book, "Vintage Milwaukee Postcards." It's a collection that Widen has been accumulating for 25 years.
"I usually used to find them at Rummage-O-Rama," says Widen. "Now there's Maxwell Street Days in Cedarburg."
Narrowing down his selections into just one book (two, actually - there's a color and a black and white version being sold), was tricky, says Widen, a life-long Milwaukeean.
"I picked the ones that I thought, for a volume of 250 images, were the most representative of some of the more familiar areas of the city, so that if someone lived here it would have almost as much relevance as someone who had visited."
"I didn't make it such an arcane book with references that only people who had been here their whole life would get," says Widen. Each photo comes with a short caption, and the research Widen did is obvious.
Widen says there are about 2,500 vintage postcards out there, so a sequel is imminent. His book focuses on images printed between 1898 and 1941.
"I envision it as a set or maybe even as a trio," says Widen. "I do have another one already planned."
Along with the postcards of architecture, breweries, street scenes and nature, Widen provides a 14-page introduction -- a history of Milwaukee to set the scene. The final few pages contain transcripts of the messages from the back of the cards the reader doesn't see.
Widen says the project came together quite quickly, and he spent 12 weeks of "intensive caption writing."
The quality of the black and white photos ranges from quite good to sub-par and pixilated, which Widen says stems from some scanning problems.
"I'm replacing as I go," he says. "The next version should be clean."
"Vintage Milwaukee Postcards" is being sold at area Harry W. Schwartz book stores and online at lulu.com. Widen will attend a book signing at the Brookfield Schwartz location on Jan. 19. His Web site is widenonline.com.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
