IMAGES OF THE MONTH - June 2020 No. 1 - Port Elizabeth 1850 Postcard
I bought this postcard of Port Elizabeth, "The Windy City", on-line recently. It cost just £3.00 (R60). I think it is attractive, a great find worth more than I paid. It is the first example I have seen of this postcard. I doubt it is a common one. I have several displays of COGH material that will benefit from it as an illustration. It shows PE a generation after the 1820 Settlers and a few years before the introduction of the first Cape Triangular stamps issued on 1st September 1853. PE is seen as a small, sleepy seaside town, a primitive port whose only means of getting imported goods into the interior was by ox-wagon using rough roads. A factory spews black smoke into a perfect sky, the beginning of some early industry. The Obelisk of the Donkin Memorial can be seen top left. The Lighthouse is not shown as it was built in 1861, some ten years after this image was painted. The wind is not blowing too hard on this day. I imagine that PE's Post Office is visible or partially visible somewhere. Can anyone point it out? Is the empty area to the left of the smoke Market Square or is that where the two flags are flying?
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Here's a nice colour-tinted postcard of the "Obelisk and Lighthouse, Donkin Reserve, Port Elizabeth". It helps put the above in some small perspective. I will, when I find it, post here a panoramic black and white postcard of central PE in the late 1890s, complete with near empty square and tram advertising, I think, Flag cigarettes. That is unless a viewer has one and posts it here first?
Also a PC with a reference to the wind. "It's blowing a gale here just now. Nearly blew the pen (?) out of my hat. This is an awful place for wind. Don't need to shave. The wind will blow your whiskers off while you wait."
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Here's the promised "panoramic black and white postcard of central PE in the late 1890s, complete with near empty square and tram advertising, I think, Flag cigarettes". It is unposted. It has taken me over a year to rediscover it. Somehow it got filed in an envelop within a folder of 'Cantonments of the Post SA War / British Army of Occupation". It comprises two joined tearaway PCs showing a B/W panorama of Market Square, Port Elizabeth, (Copyright G B & Co.). At a guess, it is pre-SA War (1899 -1902) but maybe later. Any advice on date will be appreciated.
It is either 8.15am or 15.40pm (Post Office clock left) in a remarkably empty Market Square Port Elizabeth. Post Offices are of interest to postal historians and philatelists. We can see the Town Hall, Hansen and Schrader Ltd, (Eastern Cape German influence?), Goldstein Ward & Co. and Cleghorn Harris and Ward. The Public Library, then many a person's 'university, can be seen centre right. The building on the far right has the Union Castle Line offices on the top floor, a Mutual Life office (second floor), and R James Chemist (ground floor). There are numerous horses and carts, perhaps a carriage of sorts waits outside the Town Hall. A Port Elizabeth Tramway Company tram advertises Three Castles cigarettes (not Flags, as previously suggested). There are NO horseless carriages and NO traffic congestion.
I have tidied the worst of the dirt, speckles and staining in Photoshop. Feel free to use this but please do NOT sell it.
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