INTRODUCTION

The history of postcards and the history of Amsterdam converge in a fascinating way. In the latter half of the 19th century, changes in postal practices, photography, and printing combined to create a simple, cheap, and visually interesting way to send mail without letters or envelopes. What happened next was not expected; this good idea became a collecting craze that lasted into the first decades of the 20th century. At the same time, Amsterdam was at the height of a transformation fueled by its rapid economic and population growth: the old fabric of the earlier village was being replaced by the shape the city would keep until it was torn apart by urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s.

The postcards from that period are a visual record of these important changes. Many of them have not been seen other than by collectors since they were first published. Either of these two points would be reason enough to publish them, but there is a third reason that is important, if not more important, than the other two. The postcards are a collection, and seen together, they offer information beyond what is printed on all the individual cards.

As a collection, we derive an idea of what Amsterdamians and visitors thought interesting, attractive, or significant about the city. We do so by seeing which sites have more views published and which were not published at all. For example, there are at least two shots each of the Chalmers Mill for both construction and the finished buildings; four shots of the landscaping and ramps at the rail depot; and none of Green Hill Cemetery. Hotels and churches run about even with each other. What does this tell us? That the new mill on the south side was considered a major civic accomplishment; that Amsterdamians were proud of the appearance of the main entry way to their city; that a large number of persons stayed at hotels; and that attitudes towards the cemetery had shifted greatly in the decades since it was seen as a novel addition to the city and a matter of civic pride.

When organizing this book, we have tried to limit the number of similar images without imprinting our own “frequency analysis” on the collection or preventing the reader from making his or her own discoveries. We have also arranged the images geographically by the traditional sections of the city rather than the more common method of topic. We did this because, in a heavily developed city such as ours, it becomes difficult to tell one mill or schoolhouse from another, let alone relate them to each other and fit them into a mental picture of the city overall. It is even harder to do this in a city where so many visual prompts that could have helped tie it all together have been swept off the landscape by urban renewal and arterial roadway construction.

By arranging the areas in the sequence in which they developed, the reader also gets a feel for what shaped the city as it grew. As an aid to this, and also because many of these have not been widely available, we start each section with a historical map centered on the area discussed.

Although a great deal of history is encapsulated in each image, this book is not intended to be a general history of Amsterdam; for that, we recommend the Images of America series book on Amsterdam. Rather, this book is intended to bring together images long unseen, to look at them in new ways, and to discover new information about the city. We hope it will allow the reader to better see and feel the Amsterdam that once was and understand how the memory of it informs and shapes today’s city.

Perhaps no single image is more evocative of Amsterdam’s past and its continuing resonance today, than this image of the Stephen Sanford mansion before its major 1913 renovation. The Sanford family started the first carpet mills in what would become the “carpet city” and were involved in many of the civic enhancements represented in the postcards contained in this volume. Their last benefice was to donate the mansion to the city as its first permanent city hall (see page 103).