Victory View, Minneapolis & Robbinsdale, Minnesota

Victory Memorial Drive runs north to south from the bottom left corner of this postcard. Victory Memorial Drive is a landscaped boulevard in north Minneapolis commemorating fallen World War I soldiers from Hennepin County, Minnesota. It was originally dedicated on June 11, 1921. A rededication of Victory Memorial Drive took place on June 11, 2011.

The postcard shows the Victory View subdivision, an area in Robbinsdale just west of the drive and Minneapolis. The area shown with street name labels is between 40th and 43rd Avenues North. The card was mailed December 30, 1924. The back of the postcard has an ad for Victory View by the D. C. Bell Investment Co. (realtors for more than 44 years):

Minneapolis' new and beautiful lake district residential sub-division on the famous Victory Memorial Drive and beautiful Crystal Lake at 40th Ave. No. Free inspection by auto may be arranged by phoning our sub-division department. You are earnestly invited to inspect Victory View today.

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Norwegian Olympic Stamps

This postcard shows the ten stamps issued by the Norwegian Postal Service to mark the 1994 Winter Olympic Games held in Lillehammer, Norway. The stamps were designed to show that there is more to the Olympic Games than sport alone. The Olympics are also a place for cultural exchange where nations gather and celebrate their togetherness.

The first two stamps (top left) in the series were issued on October 9, 1992. Their theme is Lillehammer and Norway. The host city was profiled by silhouette sketches of its leading
cultural attractions.

The next stamps (top right) were issued at the beginning of the torch relay on November 27, 1993. The torch relay criss-crossed Norway for 75 days on a 8000 kilometre journey. The national flame was timed to arrive at the opening ceremony in Lillehammer on February 12, 1994 and be united with the Olympic flame from ancient Olympia.

February 12, 1994 was the opening day of the XVII Winter Olympic Games. It was also the day-of-issue for the last two special sets. The first set (center) consisted of four stamps with the theme of nations coming together to compete in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994. The second set of two stamps (bottom left and right) honors the competitors and visitors of nations which have NOCs recognized by the IOC. One portrays a parade of the national flags of Europe, and the other portrays flags from elsewhere in the world.

Norways Olympic Stamps tells about these stamps and also some other sports theme stamps issued by Norway.

I am participating in Sunday Stamps at Viridian's Postcard Blog

Chrysler Building - Tall Building & Tall Postcard

This postcard of the Chrysler building in New York is as tall (long) as three regular size postcards. This card was designed to be folded to the size of a regular postcard for mailing.

Below is a scan of the text portion of the card's back. (click to enlarge)

The black and white photo shows the Chrysler with its surroundings ca. 1930. This photo is from a Detroit Publishing Co. glass negative in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.

The following information is from Wikipedia.

The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at 319 meters (1,047 ft),it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931. After the destruction of the World Trade Center, it was again the second-tallest building in New York City until December 2007, when the spire was raised on the 365.8-meter (1,200 ft) Bank of America Tower, pushing the Chrysler Building into third position. In addition, The New York Times Building, which opened in 2007, is exactly level with the Chrysler Building in height.

The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City. In 2007, it was ranked ninth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. It was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 until the mid-1950s, but, although the building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for the construction of it and never owned it, as Walter P. Chrysler decided to pay for it himself, so that his children could inherit it.

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Jacksonville Zoo Sign

This postcard shows a sign pointing to the entrance of the Jacksonville, Florida Zoo. I don't know the age of this card, but I doubt that this sign is still there. The zoo began a major redevelopment in 1992, and the first phase included a new front entry gate and parking lot. The name of the zoo was officially changed from the Jacksonville Zoo to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens in 2003.

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Century of Progress Stamps & Postcards

A Century of Progress Exposition was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1933 and 1934 to celebrate Chicago's centennial. The theme of the fair was science and technological innovation.

Several U. S. stamps were issued to commemorate Chicago Century of Progress. Here I have two postcards with the 1-cent Fort Dearborn stamp and First Day of Issue cancellations on May 25, 1933. The one above with the pictorial cachet gives the opening as June 1, but the fair actually opened a week earlier. That card is blank on the other side.

The second postcard has a picture of the Fort Dearborn replica on one side, and a regular postcard back with a cachet that appears to be rubber-stamped.

The two commemorative stamps below are from my old stamp album:

• 1-cent Restoration of Fort Dearborn. The 1-cent green stamp shows Fort Dearborn, the pioneer fort that had been located at the mouth of the Chicago River.
  
• 3-cent Federal Building. The 3-cent violet stamp shows the three massive towers of the Federal Building on the exposition grounds.
  
  

You can see the design better on the pair below which is from a souvenir sheet.

There was also a 50-cent century of Progress Graf Zeppelin airmail stamp issued. The price included 42½ cents used to help offset the Zeppelin Company's expenses in flying the airship from Germany to Chicago. This stamp is now worth $55.00. The picture is from the Arago website.

The video is one I recently made with some of my Century of Progress postcards.

I am participating in Sunday Stamps at Viridian's Postcard Blog

William Crooks - First Locomotive in Minnesota

The postcard above shows the William Crooks locomotive when it was on display in the St. Paul Union Depot. The locomotive was on display there from 1954 until the depot closed in 1971. Since 1975 the the William Crooks has been in Duluth, Minnesota's Historic Union Depot in the Lake Superior Railroad Museum.

The photo below is from the Minnesota Historical Society Visual Resources Database. It shows The William Crooks alongside Great Northern Railway locomotive 2030, circa 1925.

The William Crooks was the first steam locomotive to run in Minnesota and is one of the few Civil War era locomotives still in existence. The locomotive was constructed in 1861 and eventually became part of the Great Northern Railway. It was named for William Crooks, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Great Northern's predecessor line), and Colonel of the Sixth Regiment, MN Volunteers, in the Civil War. The engine arrived in St. Paul by Mississippi riverboat in 1861. On June 28, 1862, it made its maiden run over the first ten miles of Minnesota railroad, from St. Paul to St. Anthony (now Minneapolis).

Here is some information from the Lake Superior Railroad Museum website. More information can be found here.

Most of the early steam locomotives had cowcatchers on the front of them. This is because there were open ranges at the time, and cows and other animals wandered all over. If an animal got on the tracks and refused to move after bells were rung and whistles blown, the locomotive would use the cowcatcher to push the animal off the tracks. It might get hurt or even killed, but the cowcatcher prevented the animal from getting underneath the wheels of the train and derailing it. The headlight is a kerosene lantern, and the dome marked #1 is a sand dome. If the rails were slippery, the engineer pulled a lever and sand went down the tube and was dropped off in front of the drive wheel, providing better traction for the locomotive. A screen covers the top of the smokestack to curtail the sparks created from burning wood. These sparks might otherwise start fires along the tracks. The boiler is the long green part and was filled with water. A hot fire was built in the firebox of the locomotive cab. It heated all of the water in the boiler and turned it into steam. The steam went into the pistons and made the side rods go back and forth, which made the wheels go around. This is basically how a steam engine works. All of the extra water and fuel (in this case, wood) were kept in the tender until needed.

The William Crooks was retired from active service around the turn of the century. Its last trip under steam was to the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948. The video shows it as "The Pioneer Train" en route to the New York World's Fair in 1939.

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Garden Signs

These two vintage postcards both have pictures of garden signs in Florida with the same quotation by Dorothy Frances Gurney (1858-1932), an English poet and hymn writer. The first sign was at Busch Gardens, Tampa. The second sign was at Sarasota Jungle Gardens.

The quotation is from a longer poem:

THE Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.

So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.

And I dream that these garden closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth, –
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

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