Portrait of Route 66: Images from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives
by T. Lindsay Baker
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Description
By the time Route 66 received its official numerical designation in 1926, picture postcards had become popular travel souvenirs. At the time, these postcards with colorful images served as advertisements for roadside businesses. While cherished by collectors, these postcard depictions do not always reflect reality. They often present instead a view enhanced for promotional purposes. Portrait of Route 66 lets us see for the first time the actual photographs from which the postcards were made, show more and in describing how the production process worked, introduces us to an extraordinary archival collection, adding new history to this iconic road. The Curt Teich Postcard Archives, held at the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois, contains one of the nation's largest collections of Route 66 images, including thousands of job files for postcards produced by Curt Teich and Company of Chicago. T. Lindsay Baker combed these files to choose the best examples of postcards and their accompanying photographs not only to reflect well-known sites along the route but also to demonstrate the relationships between photographs and their resulting postcards. The photographs show the reality of the locations that customers sometimes wanted "improved" for aesthetic purposes in creating the postcards. Such alterations included removing utility poles or automobile traffic and rendering overcast skies partly cloudy. This book will interest historians of art and design as well as the worldwide audiences of Route 66 aficionados and postcard collectors. For its mining of an invaluable and little-known photographic archive and depiction of high-quality photographs that have not been seen before, Portrait of Route 66 will be irresistible to all who are interested in American history and culture. show lessTags
Member Reviews
My interest in this book is due more to the use of the Curt Teich Postcard Archives than the subject of Route 66. Like my ancestors on my father's side, Curt Otto Teich (1877-1974) was a German immigrant who came to Chicago and was very successful. From its opening in 1898 through 1978, the company produced postcards for businesses and attractions across the country. The records of this postcard production company, once the largest in America, originally wound up at the Lake County Forest Preserve District's Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois. Now the collection is about to be transferred to the Newberry Library in Chicago. Some of the collection is available online in the Illinois Digital Archives.
T. Lindsay Baker, a show more history professor at my place of employment (Tarleton State University), visited the Teich archives and researched in the production files for postcards along historic Route 66, the former U.S. highway that ran 2500 miles across eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles. Many of the production files included the original black-and-white photographs that were used to create the postcards.
The book features 112 sites (organized geographically starting in Chicago) along Route 66, presented in double-page spreads. One side of the spread includes the black-and-white photo (often with notations on cropping and colors to use) along with the finished postcard (except in one case, where apparently a postcard was never made). The other side of each spread includes Baker's research about the business or attraction pictured and the production of the postcard. Baker also includes a brief description of what (if anything) was at that location in July 2014, when he and his wife took a road trip along the entire Route 66 looking for these sites.
The only things I would have liked to see in the book are:
- a small image of the text on the back of the postcard, and
- either an image of what was on the site in July 2014, or an address or GPS coordinates so one could look for oneself (on Google Maps Street View, for example).
Nevertheless, this is an outstanding book and a great addition to Route 66 history.
© Amanda Pape - 2016
[This book was borrowed from and returned to my university library.] show less
T. Lindsay Baker, a show more history professor at my place of employment (Tarleton State University), visited the Teich archives and researched in the production files for postcards along historic Route 66, the former U.S. highway that ran 2500 miles across eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles. Many of the production files included the original black-and-white photographs that were used to create the postcards.
The book features 112 sites (organized geographically starting in Chicago) along Route 66, presented in double-page spreads. One side of the spread includes the black-and-white photo (often with notations on cropping and colors to use) along with the finished postcard (except in one case, where apparently a postcard was never made). The other side of each spread includes Baker's research about the business or attraction pictured and the production of the postcard. Baker also includes a brief description of what (if anything) was at that location in July 2014, when he and his wife took a road trip along the entire Route 66 looking for these sites.
The only things I would have liked to see in the book are:
- a small image of the text on the back of the postcard, and
- either an image of what was on the site in July 2014, or an address or GPS coordinates so one could look for oneself (on Google Maps Street View, for example).
Nevertheless, this is an outstanding book and a great addition to Route 66 history.
© Amanda Pape - 2016
[This book was borrowed from and returned to my university library.] show less
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T. Lindsay Baker holds the W. K. Gordon Chair in Texas Industrial History at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, and serves as the director of the W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History at the Thurber ghost town near Mingus, Texas. Among other works, he is the author of Ghost Towns of Texas and More Ghost Towns of Texas, and he show more is coeditor of the WPA. Oklahoma Slave Narratives. show less
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