I am fascinated by this photo - probably because I have been collecting wonderful old postcards for years! Talk about a kid in a candy store!!!!! Wow!!

What I wouldn't give to have a BUNCH of those postcards!

---

American Printer and Lithographer, 1917.

Printing Plant to Be Sold.

The printing plant of the late James K. Stewart of Cincinnati is being offered for sale by the widow and the executors of the estate. Mr. Stewart made a specialty of card, invitation and small job work in connection with his post-card and rubber-stamp business, and since his death it has been continued under the supervision of the widow, who is now desirous of disposing of it.

The "Do You Like Kipling?" postcard was in the Guinness Book as the most popular postcard of all time - it is from this era.

Young Man to Lass: Do you like Kipling?
Lass: I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never Kipled

It's gotta be in there somewhere.

Also I just wonder which drawer had the "French" postcards hidden in it?

Every last one of them are on eBay now.

Besides the obvious way to tell a friend about where you were on vacation (or brag about it), postcards were also a reasonably priced souvenir or collectible, especially for young people. Even some adults collected postcards with a certain theme, such as waterfalls, monuments, or trains, and some collections numbered in the hundreds of cards.

[This photo documents the peak of the picture-postcard craze of the early 20th century. Over half a billion postcards were mailed in America in 1907, when the U.S. population was only 88 million. Not to mention many more millions of cards that were collected but never mailed. - Dave]

I'm guessing there are about 2000 slots on the walls. I have to remember to slip a twenty in my pocket before I get in my time machine and visit this shop.

I think today's equivalent would be a greeting card store. Occasionally, I find myself browsing through the funny ones. It's a good way to kill some time while my wife is searching for a birthday card with a meaningful message.

This would be the equivalent of today's internet cafe.

Okay, find all the postcards with images from Detroit Publishing that were previously shown on Shorpy.

1,2,3 -- Go!

I wonder if the beadwork on the wall was for sale, too. It looks like a very nice piece. It looks "sort of" authentic and only slightly tacky (unlike the other "handicrafts").

I downloaded the full LOC tiff to get a better look at that beverage dispenser. I wonder if there was another for the spittoon-using clientele: "Have a Chaw with the Post Card Man."

It would have taken at least a couple of hours for me to choose one.

From the looks of that floor in the foreground, I think I know where the spittoon was previously!

[Those would be from the fountain. - Dave]

Geez, where's Waldo??