The University of Baltimore Archives is pleased to present a new online exhibit, From Baltimore with Love: Postcards from the Collection of the Baltimore City Historical Society. In collaboration with the Goucher College internship program and the Baltimore City Historical Society, The UB Archives has digitized a colorful array of postcards from Baltimore, featuring a variety of recognizable landmarks, many of which still stand today.
This historical note from the exhibit provides a background for the collection:
“The postcards in this exhibit are primarily from the early 20th century, from the early 1900s to the 1940s. The postcards are primarily colorized, which was a popular custom during this time. Color photography was not yet accessible, but photographs would be taken in black and white, colorized by hand, often in very vibrant colors, giving them an almost otherworldly look, and then mass produced for sale. Some of the photographs remain black and white but they seem to have been less popular than the colorized ones. I & M Ottenheimer was a postcard production company founded by two brothers based in Baltimore, but in the early days they imported their colorized photographs from Germany, where the practice of colorizing postcards began. Although the bulk of the postcards were made and produced by Baltimore based companies, there are a few producers in this collection based in Philadelphia, New York, and Germany.”
To view high resolution scans of over 150 of these postcards, please visit the digital exhibit using the the following link:
From Baltimore, With Love: Postcards from the Collection of the Baltimore City Historical Society
To learn more about the Baltimore Historical Society, visit their website at this link:
The Baltimore City Historical Society
For more information about the Goucher College Internship Program that helped make this exhibit possible, visit this link to their website:
Goucher College Micro-Internships