Greetings from 9 Vintage Rhode Island Postcards

Photography from the Rhode Island Postcard Collection, Providence Public Library.

They were the original text messages. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, postcards flooded American post offices as correspondents took advantage of the cheap and easy way to keep in touch. The Providence Public Library has more than 2,000 postcards in its Rhode Island Collections chronicling the history of the state’s buildings and residents. “A lot of people use our collection specifically because they’re looking to document architecture or views, streetscapes, things like that. But I feel like the back, the correspondence piece, is completely underutilized,” says Kate Wells, curator of the Rhode Island Collections. Now mostly confined to gift shops and holiday greetings, postcards were a popular way to share images long before the advent of social media sites. “I really like the ones that showcase things that aren’t there anymore,” says Wells, such as Vanity Fair, an amusement park whose short-lived run in East Providence is documented in a dozen postcards in the library’s collection. Others record the banalities of everyday life. “They’re not meant to be full detailed letters. Sometimes the image itself is just as important,” she says. 

See the postcards up close in the gallery below.