How Old Postcard Wednesday began

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

It's Old Post Card Wednesday--Manhattan Municipal Building

I have an old General Electric Steam & Dry Iron box that is full of vintage postcards, courtesy of my maternal grandmother, who saved cool stuff, and of my mother, who in turn saved just about everything. Of course it's stored upstairs with the tumble of clutter that I first blogged about here. (Writing this blog is actually helping me get organized, I'm not sure why.)

I thought about this stash of postcards when I was preparing the post about Lydia #2 that preceded this one, when, among my small pouch of photos and letters pertaining to her, I found that I am also in possession of some vintage Finnish postcards courtesy of my paternal grandmother. It's all a bit of a goldmine of postcard memorabilia and I decided to share these on my blog just for fun and general interest. For the sake of consistency I will do this on Wednesdays until I've scanned and blogged the whole bunch. I haven't counted them so I have no idea how many Wednesdays this will cover.

It was easy to decide which postcard I'd post first. The Manhattan Municipal Building in New York City is where Mike and I were married on September 1, 1995! We didn't exactly elope because family, friends, and employers all knew our plans but we did get the heck away from everyone who knew us to start our married life on our own terms. We flew to New York and stayed a week. I'm getting gleeful just thinking about what a fantastic time we had. But the purpose of this post isn't to describe our wedding day and trip; I might do that in a future post.

Since the back of this postcard refers to "the new Municipal Building" completed in 1913 the postcard you're looking at is over 90 years old, and, like the building itself, a thing of beauty!

According to information provided in the link referenced above, the building design used Roman, Italian Renaissance and Classical styles and was actually completed in 1915, although the first offices were occupied in 1913. The short article is worth a quick read. It ends with a description of current day use of the building, noting: "Some 2,000 people use the various services and agencies located in the building every day, including over 80 couples who visit the City Clerk for four-minute weddings." Those four-minute weddings can be very meaningful, I must say.