Picturing Berkeley: A Postcard History - Softcover

Susan Cerny; Ed Herny; Sarah Wikander

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586854682 ISBN 13: 9781586854683

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, 2005

Synopsis

Now in paperback, this award-winning book features more than 400 reproductions of postcards depicting the Berkeley area during the early 1900s. The book's chapters include "History of the Postcard," "The City Beautiful," "Picturing the University," "The 1923 Berkeley Fire," "Greetings from Berkeley," as well as chapters on Berkeley neighborhoods, culture and events. The many postcards featured in the book record for posterity the classical buildings that transformed both the University campus and Berkeley's downtown, the homes built in outlying areas after the introduction of the Key System trains and streetcars, the Claremont Hotel in its romantic garden setting, and the events of the day that helped shape Berkeley. Handwritten messages on many of the cards tell fascinating stories and bring these postcards to life.

A recipient of the "Certificate of Excellence" from the 33rd Annual Bookbuilders West Book Show.

Burl Willes has written numerous travel books, including Undiscovered Islands of the Caribbean and Undiscovered Islands of the Mediterranean (with co-author Linda Lancione Moyer). His book Tales from the Elmwood, A Community Memory received the Governor's Award for Historic Preservation in 2001 and Picturing Berkeley, A Postcard History earned an Award of Excellence in 2003. He lives in Berkeley.

About this title

About the Author:

Burl Willes has written numerous travel books, including Undiscovered Islands of the Caribbean and Undiscovered Islands of the Mediterranean (with co-author Linda Lancione Moyer). His book Tales from the Elmwood, A Community Memory received the Governor's Award for Historic Preservation in 2001 and Picturing Berkeley, A Postcard History earned an Award of Excellence in 2003. He lives in Berkeley.

Contributor

Ed Herny has served on the Board of Directors of the Berkeley Historical Society since its founding in 1978. He began studying and collecting the works of Charles and Louise Keeler several years earlier. He is president of the San Francisco Bay Area Post Card Club, an ephemerist and an "active student of history."

contributor

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Foreword

It is difficult to imagine today just how popular postcards were at the beginning of the twentieth century. Priced at a penny each, the picture postcard was bright, attractive, and an easy form of communication. A postcard sent in the morning mail could arrive that same day in the afternoon mail delivery. By 1908, every town in American large enough to have a Main Street was pictured in postcards. That year, 677 million postcards were mailed in the United States, yet the population was only 88 million! In Berkeley, however, there was more to photograph than its main street, Shattuck Avenue. The new University, the first in the West, was a great tourist attraction. The postcard possibilities were almost unlimited. When the Greek Theater opened in 1903, it was difficult to keep up with the demand for scens of the new amphitheater....

When Ken Cardwell and I first decided to do a book on Berkeley postcards, we envisioned a small, simple book highlighting perhaps a hundred cards from the Berkeley Historical Society collection. The project became larger and grander when Sarah Wikander enthusiastically offered to let us use her collection of 1,600 Berkeley postcards. For the first time we saw many new scenes from Berkeley's past, and we knew then that we had a treasure to share and document.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1586854682
• ISBN 13: 9781586854683
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224