The Old Coot checks some old postcards. Article #1055 Published N0vember 11, 2023

 The Old Coot checks the mail.

By Merlin Lesssler

 I’ve used a couple of old postcards as bookmarks for the past several years. Keith (of Keith & Phyllis from London, Ontario, Canada) found them in an antique shop in Daytona Beach; he bought them and gave them to me because they were from Binghamton, NY, where he knew I grew up. The one I’m using at the moment, marks my page in the book, Stateless by Elizabeth Wein. It features the New Armory building, downtown on Washington Street. (An excellent book, by the way)

 

The card was sent by Alice of Binghamton to Mrs. Elmer A. Lawrence of Stamford NY. (Delaware County), postmarked, October 5^th, 1907, 9am. It’s interesting that the name of the county was part of the address. A one-cent postage stamp got it there, arriving at the Stamford post office at 9am, on October 7^th. Pretty fast service in those days, probably by rail. I’m not sure we can match it today.

 

The armory looks like a castle; it sports a two story tower on one end of the facility and a five story tower on the other. It was built in 1904 and existed as an armory until 1932, replaced by a more modern facility on the west side of Binghamton. It became a college in 1948 when New York State created five institutions of Arts & Science around the state, to serve the flood of GI’s returning home after World War ll. Locals called it State Tech. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1951, leading to the construction of a new campus on upper Front Street, called Broome Tech, where I went to college in the early 1960’s. Now it’s referred to as SUNY Broome.

 

The second postcard, addressed to Ella Whitaker in Hancock, NY pictures the city post office, now a piece of rubble, buried someplace under a parking lot. The postmark shows the card left Binghamton at 9:30 pm on July 5, 1912. No date is noted on the receiving end.

 

The third postcard, residing in Moby Dick, a slow read I’ve been working on for over 6 months, sports a picture of the United States Post office and Court House. The facility is still in operation today, but the postal function has moved down the block. This card was sent in 1937 to Mrs. John Jacob of Seneca Falls, NY. This too, made the journey with a one-cent stamp, 37 years after the first card was sent. Wouldn’t it be nice if postal rates held up that long these days? The stamps on the earlier cards had a picture of Benjiman Franklin in a frontal pose. The 1937 stamp showed him in profile, revealing long locks of hair. The country’s first hippie. You’ve got to love it!