Snow Scenes in Postcards

For the last ten days or so, the nation’s weather forecasters have been addressing us in their self important faux-demotic on the subject of snow. In ever more apocalyptic terms we have been warned to expect unprecedented extremes of freezing temperatures and snowfall. If it was their intention to induce fear and dread, their success is demonstrated by reports of panic-buying of basic foods and supplies. TV newsgatherers have been out and about in the snow covered uplands in anticipation of blood curdling tales of human suffering – you can sense their disappointment when their interviewees respond with stoic acceptance of the tribulations of winter. In the meantime, the red tops have reworked the weather event as The Beast from the East in a phrase that neatly evokes the national paranoia over immigration that has poisoned political discourse in recent years. As a reminder that winter hardship was, and remains so for many, a routine event, we offer a selection of vintage postcards from winters past. To see some illustrations of snow scenes posted in 2010, please follow this link.

Postcard of the Night No. 7, Keith’s Theatre, Boston

This luminous façade, glowing in the darkness of the city by night is the B F Keith Theatre in Boston. No living presence intrudes on the scene except the ominous silhouette of a carnivore to be seen at a window. Keith’s background was in the circus and variety programmes but in 1896 he opened the Union Square Theatre in New York and began showing moving pictures licensed from the Lumière Brothers. The business expanded rapidly with theatres in Philadelphia and this one in Boston. Fourteen years after his death in 1914 his name would live on as the K in RKO pictures.

Boston Transit

Two postcard views of the multi-level Dudley Street Terminal in Roxbury showing the tracks of the Washington Street Elevated with streetcar loops at either side and at ground level. A model-makers dream captured from north and southbound directions. Most has been swept away in recent decades but the central section has been adapted for use as a bus depot and appears to retain some of its former distinction.

The story of Boston’s subway is complicated and anyone interested can read about it here. The Scollay Square station shown here was opened in 1898 and after much rebuilding is now known as Government Center. The Tremont Street Subway, the oldest in North America connects it with the location of our last card, Park Street station. This composed and untroubled image contrasts greatly with the spatial complexities existing below the surface that featured in an earlier posting and can be viewed here.

Park Street Subway

It is always fascinating to learn what goes on beneath the city streets. Walker Evans in one of his lectures on postcards included this arresting image from the city of Boston. He commented, I can’t read it ........ but what an abstraction. It’s a most optically baffling picture replete with spatial contradictions. The eye searches for a way out of this subterranean cul-de-sac but each track seems to be blocked. The right hand track appears to offer the best prospect of escape until you notice that it too is closed off. It could function as a model for the interior of the human mind where everything appears rational and organised until on closer examination it all falls apart as reason and logic take flight. What is astonishing is not just that this is all the product of sound engineering principles but that someone photographed it with the intention of marketing the image to the public in postcard form. Thank goodness they did.