Vintage Postcard Motherload- Boston Public Library Flickr

How cool is it that the Boston Public Library has a Flickr page to share even a sliver of the cool things in its collection? I happened upon this while doing a Flickr image search and could spend days going through their sets. One that I think is right up the Retro Roadmap alley is their collection of Tichnor Brothers vintage postcards of all of the New England states.

The Tichnor Brothers collection contains approximately 25,000 office proofs of postcards of the United States published by the Boston firm Tichnor Brothers Inc. These are color postcards with a linen texture, dating from the late 1940’s to 1960’s. The concentration is on American vacation places.

There are a little over 4500 New England postcard photos in this collection, so give yourself some time to admire them up close and at your leisure. The cool thing about the vintage postcards being scanned is that they can be enlarged so you can see the detail of the card (like the fact that Barbara Stanwyck was starring in a film playing at the Capitol Theater on Main Street in Ansonia CT)

AND even cooler, all sizes of their postcard photos are available for download under a Creative Commons license. The mind reels at the creative possibilities and historical details that await!