Vintage Photos of Buildings

"Lyndhurst Electric Farm, Geo. J. Hoopes, owner." The Lyndhurst Electric Farm was located along the Lincoln Highway in Caln Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, somewhere between the towns of Coatesville and Downingtown. The "Electric Farm" name came about in an obvious way sometime in the early twentieth century: "Township manager Sam Moore, a lifelong resident, remembers the excitement when one farm had its barn wired for electricity. Local residents immediately christened it 'The Electric Farm'" (see Jeff Gammage, " Caln Highway: Extension of History's Path ," philly.com, Nov. 1, 1987). Brian Butko, in his book, The Lincoln Highway: Pennsylvania Traveler's Guide , 2nd ed. (Stackpole Books, 2002), p. 76, mentions that "Lyndhurst was a farm and tourist home operated by George J. Hoopes," but I haven't been able to uncover any additional information regarding the Lyndhurst Electric Farm or its owner.

Three signs with slightly different wording are visible on this real photo postcard: - "This is Mrs. Campbell's Bar-B-Q." - "This is Mrs. Campbell's Home of the Bar-B-Q." - "This is Mrs. Campbell's Home Bar-B-Q." Judging from the few newspaper advertisements that I was able to track down, Mrs. Campbell's Bar-B-Q was in business near Tyrone, Pennsylvania, during the late 1920s and early 1930s. One ad in the Tyrone Daily Herald , Dec. 22, 1927, p. 8, provides the following information: "Chicken and Waffles Sunday. At Mrs. Campbell's Barbecue. Come and eat all of Mrs. Campbell's famous waffles you can eat. 5 miles west of Tyrone, near Bland's Park. Phone 9756-R." Bland's Park is now known as DelGrosso's Amusement Park and is located along Pleasant Valley Boulevard (also called Old U.S. Route 220) between Tyrone and Altoona. Although the park is still in existence, I haven't been able to determine what happened to Mrs. Campbell's Bar-B-Q. The latest mention of the eatery that I was able to find was an announcement in the Altoona Mirror newspaper for April 10, 1934, p. 20: "The Ladies' Aid society of the Methodist church will meet at Mrs. Campbell's barbecue on Wednesday evening, April 11."

Caption: "S. S. Grand View Point. A Steamer in the Allegany Mts. Elv. 2624 ft. 17 m. W. of Bedford, Pa. U.S. 30. 4-CEG-32." Signs and banners: "Grand View Point Hotel. Post Cards. Souvenirs. See 3 States and 7 Counties. Visitors Welcome. Free Telescope." "Restaurant. Rooms." "S.S. Grand View Point....Open for Business." This image of the famous Ship Hotel , which was a popular roadside attraction along the Lincoln Highway (U.S. Route 30) in western Pennsylvania until it burned to the ground in 2001, is a real photo postcard by Charles Elmer Gerkins (indicated by the initials "CEG" in the caption) that's dated April 1932 ("4-32"). In The Ship Hotel: A Grand View along the Lincoln Highway (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2010), author Brian Butko quotes a 1930s WPA guide to explain the reason that the building was shaped like a ship: "The S.S. Grand View Point Hotel was remodeled in 1931 to give the impression of an ocean liner, because the owner saw a resemblance between early morning mists rising from the valley and billowing ocean waves." After enlarging the image, I discovered that two of the banners on the building (including the one hanging on the railing just above "3 States") indicate that the "S.S. Grand View Point" is "Open for Business." Since the building was remodeled to look like a ship sometime in 1931 (the smokestacks, deck, and bow-shaped front of the building were added at that time), I wonder if this photo from April 1932 shows the building just after it reopened. See also two linen postcards that illustrate the 63-Mile View from the hotel and the Approach to the Hotel :

A home sweet home photo for the Vintage Photos Theme Park . Handwritten on the back of this real photo postcard: "How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood." The words written on the back of the photo refer to a line from "The Old Oaken Bucket," a poem written by Samuel Woodworth (1784-1842) that was first set to music in 1826 and has become a popular song that's endured over the years. The poem begins: How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view! The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew! Whoever wrote on the back of the photo presumably had "fond recollections" of living here as a child and must have considered it a "home sweet home" (which itself is a reference to another song that also dates to the early nineteenth century). The namesake "gold elms" are visible just behind the house, which is a Colonial Revival Cape Cod , an architectural style common in the United States from the 1930s to 1950s. I'm not sure whether the dog that's visible among the shadows in the lower right-hand corner is there to welcome or to warn off the photographer.

Handwritten note on the back of this photo: "This is the place. Taken Sept. 12, '52. Come and see us." Handwritten by someone else: "[Eau] Claire, Wis. Simon's Gas Station." Signage on front of gas station building: "Texaco. Lear & Simon. Marfak Lubrication. Washing." Other signs, banners, and billboards around the gas station: Registered Rest Room. A Texaco Dealer Service. Grand Opening. Come in! Meet your new neighbor. B. F. Goodrich Tire. Defies skids! Grand opening today! Free gifts! Copenhagen. Outdoors, indoors, the best way to take tobacco. If you like beer you'll love Schlitz.

For more information, see the full version of this photo:

A 1950s photo for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. This 1956 photo shows a diner on "Brookline Avenue," as indicated by the pole-mounted street sign that's visible in the center of the photo (mouse over the image above for a close-up view of the diner and the sign). The letters on top of the diner's roof spell out the words "GOOD FOOD," and the name "Federal Diner" is barely legible on a circular sign situated above the entrance at the middle of the building. Four or five men are standing around the cars near the front door of the diner, and they appear to be looking in the direction of the photographer, perhaps waiting for him while he takes the photo. Or maybe they're watching the woman wearing a dress and high heels who's walking past on the sidewalk. This eatery was the "Good Food Federal Diner," formerly located at 410 Brookline Avenue in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. For another 1950s view of this diner, see Good Food Back in the Day on Boston's Universal Hub site.

"Dreamland at Legat Garden. Boudnek Photo. 58." This "Dreamland" castle was constructed in the 1920s by a man named John Legat as part of a garden in Fox River Grove, Illinois, that also included a wishing well, windmill, and fountain. Legat, who was married to the town's doctor, gave tours of his garden and sold postcard views of it (including, possibly, this one). Legat's land was later turned into building lots, and the garden gave way to a neighborhood of houses. Some of Legat's structures--including the castle--still remain, although they're in a state of disrepair. Check out Google Maps for a current view of the castle, which is located in a front yard at the corner of Grove and Lincoln avenues in Fox River Grove. For additional information, see the article, " Fox River Grove’s Other Castle ," which was originally published in the Northwest Herald , June 7, 2011. (The title of the article refers to another castle that's a full-size residence known as Castle Vianden or Bettendorf Castle; see the Wikipedia entry for Fox River Grove, Illinois , which provides a brief history and photo of this second castle.)

Sign on the side of the building in the photo: "Floricultural Establishment. C. Eisele, N.W. cor. 11th and Jefferson Streets." "C. Eisele, florist, 1500 & 1502 N. Eleventh St., Philadelphia." A remarkable nineteenth-century business card with a photo of the Eisele greenhouse and shop on one side and the florist's name and address in ornate Victorian typefaces on the other (mouse over the image above to see enlargements of the front and back ). The florist's greenhouse is attached to the side of a row house, and various plants, trees, planters, urns, and a handcart are on display on the sidewalk around it. A man (C. Eisele himself?) is visible in the lower right-hand corner of the photo, and someone else (possibly a woman--Mrs. Eisele, perhaps?) is looking out of one of the second-floor windows. C. Eisele was Christian (Johann Christian) Eisele. He operated this "Floricultural Establishment" with his brother, John G. (Johann Gottlieb) Eisele, at this location until about 1880, after which John started his own business elsewhere in Philadelphia. For more information about the brothers, see the description of John G. Eisele's " Landscape Plan and Family Documents, ca. 1840-ca. 1890 ," which are part of the holdings of the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Winterthur, Delaware.

For more information, see C. Eisele, Florist, Philadelphia, Pa. :

Butter and other products are advertised on the sign painted on the side of this building, which may be the D. A. Griffith & Sons dairy in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Mouse over the image to see a close-up of the sign . D. A. Griffith & Sons Oh boy it's good. Griffith's Home Farm Butter. Made from pure pasteurized cream. One pound net. Guaranteed by D. A. Griffith & Son, Uniontown, Pa. Schlosser's Oak Grove Butter. Farm roll style, 2 lb. Butter, eggs, cheese, milk, smoked meats, etc. Wholesale exclusively. Von Sign Co.

For more information, see the full version of this photo:

A photo of something broken for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. Handwritten note on the back of this real photo postcard: "Powder mill blew up, March 31, 1910." The remains of a powder mill following an explosion of the black powder (gunpowder) that was being manufactured in the building.

For an enlarged view of the structure , mouse over the image above. I didn't quite know what to make of this snapshot when I purchased it. The photo is dated July 1956 and shows a haphazardly constructed structure of some sort, with discarded tires, odd lengths of wood, and unidentifiable pieces of metal. A strangely shaped homemade bench stands on one side of what looks like an entrance, and a couple of steer skulls stand guard on the other side. I thought that it might be the entrance to a junkyard. A number of handmade signs appear on the structure. One sign warns, "Posted, Keep Out," and right below it is another that says, "Welcome." I spotted yet another sign with a religious message--"Do You Believe in Jesus, Thank You"--and then I noticed a pair of signs that simply say, "Sykes Ranch." Could that be the name of the junkyard? After numerous Google searches, I found a March 3, 2011, blog posting by Vance Lauderdale that described " Stephen Sykes and His 'In-Curiosity' House ." It turns our that the owner of Sykes Ranch was "a remarkable fellow named Stephen Sykes, who constructed an absolutely amazing folk-art house / junk pile / art creation outside Aberdeen, Mississippi, in the 1950s that he called 'In-Curiosity.'" Despite the Sykes Ranch signs in the photo, the structure was referred to as "In-Curiosity" by Sykes or sometimes just "Curiosity" by others, as Lauderdale recounts in his blog posting and in a Very Curious column that he wrote for Memphis Magazine , February 2011. Lauderdale also located an earlier article, " Do It Yourself 'Skyscraper' ," in Ebony magazine, March 1963, pp. 75-78, that described Stephen Sykes as "a 69-year-old bachelor with a driving amibition to rise above his fellow man." Sykes, an African-American veteran of World War I, began building In-Curiosity, which he used as a residence, in the early 1950s on family-owned land located along U.S. Route 45 near Aberdeen, Mississippi. Lauderdale heard that Stephen Sykes passed away sometime in the 1960s, and he assumed that all traces of In-Curiosity vanished when Route 45 was later widened. "But Sykes and his amazing creation," Lauderdale fittingly said, "live on in the memories of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of travelers in this area, and in grainy home movies and snapshots tucked away in boxes and scrapbooks." -------- For additional views of In-Curiosity, photos of Stephen Sykes, and further information regarding the maker and his house, check out Vance Laureldale's writings and the Ebony article: Vance Lauderdale. Very Curious column. Memphis Magazine , February 2011. Vance Lauderdale. " Stephen Sykes and His 'In-Curiosity' House ." Ask Vance , March 3, 2011. " Do It Yourself 'Skyscraper' ." Ebony , March 1963, pp. 75-78.

For information about Sykes Ranch, see the full version of this photo:

A photo of buildings in the garden/backyard (sheds, summer houses, pigeon coops, etc.) for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. "Bill's Old Backhouse" was the men's outhouse located in the backyard at Bill's Place, which was a roadside stop and service station along the Lincoln Highway (U.S Route 30) in south central Pennsylvania. Bill's Place was situated on Rays Hill at an elevation of 1,958 feet, and travelers who stopped there could climb a tower for a 40-mile view out over the surrounding area (or they could drive a little farther west on the Lincoln Highway to see the view from the Grand View Ship Hotel instead). For another outhouse featured on a real photo postcard, see Mr. Santa Claus Outhouse, Santa Claus, Arizona :

"Mr. Santa Claus. Santa Claus, Ariz., on Hiway 93. Gallup Photo." Stamped on the back of this real photo postcard: "Santa Claus, Arizona, via Box 373, Kingman." See Wikipedia's Santa Claus, Arizona article for the story of what is now an "uninhabited desert town" and how it used to be a Santa-themed tourist attraction.

An undated real photo postcard.