Greetings from New Jersey
264 pages, 8 x 10
Paperback
Release Date:01 Oct 2001
ISBN:9780813529974
Greetings from New Jersey
A Postcard Tour of the Garden State
Rutgers University Press
Winner of the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Book Award in the Trade category
Greetings from New Jersey is the first book to look back at the postcards that have played a part in New Jerseys travel industry. Helen-Chantal Pike organizes her book by the states six official tourism regions¾ Gateway, Skylands, the Delaware River, the Southern Shore, Greater Atlantic City, and the Shore. Through her section introductions and lengthy captions, she offers a lively history of each region in general and each postcard in particular. Her final chapter describes the history of postcard use from 1893, and details the different collectible genres of postcards. Loaded with full-color reproductions of vintage postcards, Greetings from New Jersey will interest all residents, visitors, and historians.
Greetings from New Jersey is the first book to look back at the postcards that have played a part in New Jerseys travel industry. Helen-Chantal Pike organizes her book by the states six official tourism regions¾ Gateway, Skylands, the Delaware River, the Southern Shore, Greater Atlantic City, and the Shore. Through her section introductions and lengthy captions, she offers a lively history of each region in general and each postcard in particular. Her final chapter describes the history of postcard use from 1893, and details the different collectible genres of postcards. Loaded with full-color reproductions of vintage postcards, Greetings from New Jersey will interest all residents, visitors, and historians.
How many states, besides maybe Florida and California, could really do this book and make it interesting? New JerseyÆs lush and occasionally bizarre landscape is perfect, and the long history of resort and recreation in the state provides a rich heap of images.
What do Wild West City and WashingtonÆs Headquarters have in common? Both are New Jersey icons. And now, thanks to a New Jerseyana journalist, postcards depicting NetcongÆs American West theme park and the Morristown mansion that Theodosia Ford donated to the Revolution, as well as hundreds of other images, are bound within the 250 pages of Greetings from New Jersey: A Postcard Tour of the Garden State. . . . PikeÆs brief text and extended captions accompany an exquisite collection of postcards chronicling the stateÆs 19th and 20th centuries, many of them . . . reproduced in the dreamy pastels of hand-painted photographs.
Helen Chantal PikeÆs book is neither fruit nor vegetable, but pure eye candy.
In the book, the reader will find a heartbreaking number of scenes and places that have vanished over the years.
Amusement parks, shipwrecks, diners, an idyllic 1952 view of the Garden State Parkway, and women decked out as lobsters for a 1940s-era Miss America parade in Atlantic Cityùthese are the sights proudly captured in vintage New Jersey postcards. Helen-Chantal Pike . . . has a special obsession for these slices of Jerseyana and now counts some 2,000 New Jersey cards in her collection, 381 of which appear in [her book].
This 256-page soft-cover book is saturated with full-cover reproductions of postcards ranging from a 1900 hand-colored print of field flowers to a 1999 photo of Tillie on the facade of the Palace Amusements building in Asbury Park.
The book is great! There are 381 cards in full color, clear and sharp, pictured on 250 pages with a very thorough index. . . . You will want several copies for yourself and friends. The book belongs in all libraries.
To flip through the pages is to take a trip back in time, a bone-rattling ride down country lanes rutted by horse and wagons, through the doors of opulent Victorian mansions or up the brick steps of a gritty three-story walk-up. . . . This is more than just a fun look at how New Jersey was pictured over the years. Teachers might want to have a look at this book as an enjoyable way to help educate their students about the history of New Jersey.
Surprises are revealed around every turn on a vintage postcard ætourÆ through the Garden State. Perhaps one of the most astonishing is finding sultry, sexy 1950s pin-up Bettie Page gracing a postcard for Ocean City. Good heavens, how did that one get by the town fathers of this alcohol-free, family-friendly town, once like Ocean Grove, a Methodist seashore retreat?
Helen-Chantal Pike is a journalist and photographer. She has written three volumes in the Images of America series, and has been a reporter for the Asbury Park Press and a travel writer for the Boston Herald. Her articles have appeared in many major newspapers, including the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor.
