ALEMAN FAMILY (HATHAWAY GIBBENS) COLLECTION

 

 

(Mss 45)

 

 

Inventory

 

 

Earl K. Long Library

University of New Orleans

 

July 1997

 

 

Contents

 

 

Summary

 

Historical/Biographical Note

 

Series, Subseries, and Descriptions

 

Container List

 

Index Terms

 

Procedures for Requesting Special Collections Materials

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

Size:                          71 items

 

Geographic

locations:                 New Orleans, Covington, and Baton Rouge, La.; Mississippi Gulf Coast; other locales in the United States and Canada.

 

Inclusive dates:      1903-1915

 

Bulk dates:              1905-1909

 

Summary:                Postcards depicting scenes of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Covington, La.; the Mississippi Gulf Coast; and various cities in the United States and Canada.  Also, holiday greeting postcards and other subjects.

 

Related

collections:              Postcards Collection (Mss 93)

 

Source:                     Gift, 1973

 

Access:                     No restrictions

 

Copyright:                Physical rights are retained by the Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans.

 

Citation:                    Aleman Family (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans

 

 

 

Historical/Biographical Note

 

 

            Government-issued postcards first appeared in Austria in 1869 as an economical means of transmitting a message.  They swiftly spread throughout Europe and were adopted in the United States in 1873.  Meanwhile, pictorial postcards were introduced in France in 1870.  Pictorials did not, however, enjoy immediate popularity in the United States, where such privately printed cards required two cents’ postage; government postcards cost only a penny.  As of July 1, 1898, the Private Mailing Card Act eliminated this inequity, and privately published postcards appeared in increasing number.  Postcards published before that date, whether mailed are not, are known as “pioneers.”

 

            The World’s Colombian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, led to the emergence of the modern postcard.  Charles Goldsmith, a Chicago entrepreneur, obtained from the U.S. Post Office a license to print souvenir views of the fair on government-issued postals.  When test sales of four cards met with success, Goldsmith issued sets of ten illustrations packaged in a wrapper.  The cards became available in 1892, in time for the exposition’s ground-breaking ceremony.

 

            After the decrease in postage rates in 1893 gave new impetus to the practice of mail­ing postcards, collecting them became one of the world’s most popular hobbies.  At first, the Post Office required that one side of the card be given over in its entirety to the recipient’s address; any message had to appear on the front with the illustration, necessitat­ing brevity.  New regulations issued in 1907 permitted publishers to divide the reverse of the card to accommodate both message and address in a format which remains in use today.

 

            The period between 1898 and the outbreak of World War I was the golden age of post­cards. Printers in Austria and Germany, where color reproduction was less costly than elsewhere, produced lovely postcards for American publishers.  During the fiscal year ending on June 30, 1908, for example, 677,777,798 postcards were mailed in the United States.  In addition, vast, uncounted quantities languished, unsent, in collectors’ albums.  At the time, the population of the United States was 88,700,000.

 

            Interest in collecting postcards, after reaching the proportion of a national mania for nearly two decades, diminished abruptly in 1914 because of the onset of World War I and the popularity of newfangled folded greeting cards.  As a result, postals dating from the 1920s through the 1960s are more scarce than older specimens.  Early collectors called their hobby “cartephilia” or “philocarty,” Greek for “a hopeless love of cards.”  A new wave of postcard collecting commenced in the 1970s, indulged in by a visually literate public which discovered them to be attractive souvenirs of travel and leisure activities, compact to store, and convenient for brief messages.  To this generation of collectors their avocation is “deltiology,” derived from Greek words meaning “small picture” and “knowledge.”

 

            During the golden age of postcard-collecting, one of the collectors was young Anne Hatha­way Gibbens, known familiarly as Hathy.  As a student of the Ursuline nuns in New Orleans between ca. 1906 and 1910, Hathaway was sent postcards by her mother and other relatives.  Hathaway also received postcards, chiefly from friends, at various Gibbens family residences in New Orleans, Louisiana and in Ocean Springs and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  She arranged the cards in albums, supplementing her own acquisitions with a small quantity of postcards addressed to her sister Gladys and to Will J. Gibbens, who presumably was her brother.

 

            Represented most prominently in Hathaway Gibbens’s collection are viewcards, those which depict a building or scene; there are just a few subject cards and no advertising postcards.  The largest two series in the collection contain Louisiana and Mississippi scenes.  Such post­cards became available in the late 1890s.  Some provide the earliest color images of small-town and rural sites and structures or the only surviving illustration of a building or an event.

 

 

 

Series, Subseries, and Descriptions

 

 

Series I.         Views of Louisiana, 1905-ca. 1912 (21 items)

 

            Subseries 1:            New Orleans, 1906-ca. 1912 (15 items)

                        Parks and public squares figure prominently among these viewcards, which also include images of the Public Library; the arrival of Rex, King of Carnival; and Ursuline Convent, where Hathaway Gibbens was educated.

 

            Subseries 2:            Baton Rouge, 1905-ca. 1907 (4 items)

                        Buildings at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge comprise most of the postcards in Subseries I.2.

 

            Subseries 3:            Covington, ca. 1912 (2 items)

                        Subseries I.3 contains two views of the Tchefunca Bridge.

 

 

Series II.        Views of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, ca. 1906-ca. 1914 (13 items)

 

            Subseries 1:            Bay St. Louis, ca. 1906-ca. 1914 (3 items)

                        Two views of hotels and one of a park comprise Subseries II.1.

 

            Subseries 2:            Biloxi, after March 1, 1907-ca. 1914 (4 items)

                        Grant’s Drug Store published most of these views of Biloxi buildings.

 

            Subseries 3:            Pass Christian, ca. 1906-after March 1, 1907 (6 items)

                        Hotels and oak trees figure prominently in Subseries II.3.

 

 

Series III.       Views of Other Locales in the United States and Canada, ca. 1903-1915 (13 items)

            Travelers sent viewcards depicting buildings and activities in six states and Canada to various members of the Gibbens family.

 

            Subseries 1:            Alabama, ca. 1912 (1 item)

 

            Subseries 2:            California, ca. 1915 (1 item)

 

            Subseries 3:            Panama-California Exposition (1915 : San Diego, CA), 1914 (2 items)

 

            Subseries 4:            Panama-Pacific Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, CA), 1915 (1 item)

 

            Subseries 5:            Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : St. Louis, MO), 1904 (2 items)

 

            Subseries 6:            Nebraska, after March 1, 1907 (1 item)

 

            Subseries 7:            New York, 1907 (2 items)

 

            Subseries 8:            Utah, ca. 1915 (1 item)

 

            Subseries 9:            Virginia, ca. 1903 (1 item)

 

            Subseries 10:          Canada, ca. 1912 (1 item)

 

 

Series IV.      Holiday Greetings, ca. 1905-ca. 1911 (14 items)

            Includes novelty cards (one mechanical, several with padded satin sections) as well as subject postcards which depict seasonally appropriate images.

 

            Subseries 1:            New Year, after March 1, 1907 (1 items)

 

            Subseries 2:            Valentine Day, after March 1, 1907 (4 items)

 

            Subseries 3:            Easter, ca. 1905-ca. 1911 (3 items)

 

            Subseries 4:            Thanksgiving, ca. 1909 (2 items)

 

            Subseries 5:            Christmas, ca. 1908-ca. 1910 (4 items)

 

 

Series V.       Other Postcards, ca. 1908-ca. 1910 (10 items)

            Includes postcards made of novelty materials.

 

            Subseries 1:            Friendship, ca. 1908-ca. 1910 (2 items)

 

            Subseries 2:            Comic Postcards, 1903-ca. 1906 (3 items)

 

            Subseries 3:            Persons, ca. 1904-ca. 1908 (2 items)

 

            Subseries 4:            Birds and Animals, ca. 1905 (1 item)

 

            Subseries 5:            Other, ca. 1905 (2 items)

 

 

 

 

Container List

 

 

Series I.  Louisiana

 

            Subseries 1: New Orleans

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 1

 

Subject:         “Washington Oak, Audubon Park, New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [ca. 1906]

 

Publisher:    

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Corners chipped; otherwise good

 

Remarks:      Publisher no. 5817.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated July 3, 1906.  Sent by Sara Perkins to Miss Hathaway G. Gibbons [!].

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 2

 

Subject:         “NEW ORLEANS, La.  Lover’s Lane—Audubon Park”

 

Date:              [after March 1, 1907]

 

Publisher:     Raphael Tuck & Sons

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Corners worn; otherwise good

 

Remarks:      “Photochromed in Germany.”  Publisher no. 2687.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated Feb. 8.  Sent by “Cecile” to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Ursuline Convent, [New Orleans, La.].

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 3

 

Subject:         “Bayou St. John, New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [ca. 1912]

 

Publisher:     Lipsher Specialty Co., 320 Magazine St., New Orleans, La.

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Corners worn; minor discoloration

 

Remarks:      Publisher no. A-15036.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated June 10, 1912.  Sent by “Aunt Sybil” to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Bay St. Louis, Missis­sippi.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 4

 

Subject:         “New Orleans, La.  Christ Church Cathedral.”

 

Date:              [1907]

 

Publisher:    

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Good

 

Remarks:      Publisher no. 5014.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated January 29, 1907.  Sent by “Mother” to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, 4580 Dauphine Street, Ursuline Convent, New Orleans, La.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 5

 

Subject:         “Old Dueling Ground, City Park, New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [not later than 1908]

 

Publisher:    

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Edges chipped; minor discoloration

 

Remarks:      Publisher no. 5816.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated June 9, 1908.  Sent by [Katherine?] to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Ursuline Convent, [New Orleans, La.].

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 6

 

Subject:         “City Park Race Track, New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [after March 1, 1907]

 

Publisher:     New Orleans News Company, New Orleans, La.

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Corners worn; minor surface dirt

 

Remarks:      Publisher no. C2939.  Sent by Hedwig Mexia to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Ursuline Convent, New Orleans, La.  No post office cancellation.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 7

 

Subject:         “Statue, Margaret Haughery, Margaret Place, New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [between March 1, 1907 and July 4, 1911]

 

Publisher:     Acmegraph Co., Chicago, Ill.

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Minor creasing; edges chipped

 

Remarks:      Publisher no. 4950.  Post office cancellation on verso dated July 4.  Sent by “Florence B.” to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, 1525 Eighth Street, New Orleans, La.  Message dated July 3, 1911.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 8

 

Subject:         “Lafayette Square, New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [1906]

 

Publisher:    

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Corners chipped; otherwise good

 

Remarks:      Publisher no. 5002.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated August 7, 1906.  Sent by “Norah” to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 9

 

Subject:         “Public Library, New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [ca. 1909]

 

Publisher:     New Orleans News Company, New Orleans, La.

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Corners chipped; otherwise good

 

Remarks:      Printed in Germany.  Publisher no. D 10020.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated October 13, 1909.  Sent by Mary O’Keefe to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Ursuline Academy, New Orleans, La.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 10

 

Subject:         “‘Landing of Rex,’ New Orleans, La.”

 

Date:              [ca. 1907]

 

Publisher:     Rotograph Co., New York City

 

Form:             Black-and-white letterpress halftone on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Good

 

Remarks:      Printed in Germany.  Publisher no. A 16611.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated 1907; message written in ink on picture face of card, affecting image.  Sent to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 11

 

Subject:         “NEW ORLEANS, La.  Southern Yacht Club, West End”

 

Date:              [ca. 1908]

 

Publisher:     Raphael Tuck & Sons

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Corners chipped; otherwise good

 

Remarks:      “Photochromed in Germany.”  Publisher no. 2637.  Post office cancellation on reverse dated July 2, 1908.  Sent by Anna Rivet to Miss Hathaway Gibbens, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

 

 

Number:        Aleman Estate (Hathaway Gibbens) Collection, No. 12

 

Subject:         “NEW ORLEANS, La.  The U. S. Mint”

 

Date:              [ca. 1906]

 

Publisher:     Raphael Tuck & Sons

 

Form:             Photogravure on postcard stock

 

Condition:    Minor discoloration

 

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