Route 66 in the News

Librarian Admits Postcard Obsession

2005-05-22 09:46:00

A poster of the old Carnegie library building in San Bernardino planted the seed in Mike Clark's brain.

A visit to a little thrift shop in Wyoming provided the first few vintage postcards. Then his basic instincts as a librarian took over.

Clark now owns a collection of some 1,500 antique postcards, gathered over the past three years. He admits that his hobby has become "a bit of an obsession."

"Since I was a child I have collected rocks, stamps, coins, sports cards, books, the list goes on and on," said Clark, 55, associate director of the Norman Feldheym Central Library in San Bernardino. "In all cases, the fun is in the collecting and the organization of what I have found."

Clark started by collecting cards only from San Bernardino, he said. He expanded his range to include cards from Laguna Beach, where he and his family spend a week each summer.

"Soon I was collecting cards from the national parks and other places we have been to visit," he said.

Clark's collection, which fills a half dozen three-ring binders, now includes sections on San Bernardino and neighboring communities, California, national parks and the entire United States.

The California cards are arranged alphabetically by city and the U.S. cards by state, of course.

Clark estimates that he owns 100 to 200 pre-1950 postcards from the San Bernardino-Riverside area. He is partial to library buildings, especially the long-gone Carnegie building in San Bernardino whose photograph in a neighboring office inspired his hobby.

Clark's main attraction to the postcards is the way in which they were hand-colored before color photography was prevalent. He believes that many of the earlier cards depicting U.S. sites originally were black and white photographs handpainted in Germany or other European countries. He points out cards of similar buildings that were tinted different shades by different painters, none of whom knew what the true colors should be.

Clark ferrets out his postcards at garage and yard sales, estate sales, antique stores and even on Ebay. He estimates that he adds an average of six to eight cards to his collection each week.

He usually pays 25 cents to $1 for a card but has spent as much as $6 to $8 on several.

"The ones that show Route 66 motels or old cars seem to go for higher prices," he said.

Clark finds himself especially drawn to cards depicting local sites or photos of striking buildings or beautiful scenery. Most of the vintage cards were printed before 1950 and many were never sent.

He often does research on the building or geographical site shown on the card.

A number of the vintage postcards depict San Bernardino locales that have been built over, such as Urbita Springs, where Inland Center mall now sits.

"It's always interesting to see where cards from San Bernardino or Riverside have ended up," he said. "Especially the ones that were never mailed."

~Penny Schwartz, San Bernardino Press-Enterprise