Thumbnail

 

Not in the way we use the word now.  This photo of Grandma reading the paper is about the size of my thumbnail.  It's a bit out of focus, and if blown up, wouldn't be readable. 

The Reading Pagoda

 

Navigate back to the beginning of the month, and you'll find a post about the Grand View Ship Hotel, a local tourist attraction from western Pennsylvania, not in Pittsburgh.  This is another postcard dedicated to a tourist site that I visited in my childhood, though, since it was on the other side of Pennsylvania, only once.  (For the life of me I can't remember why we ventured to the other side of the Appalachians.)  So, the caption on the back of the card, "READING'S PAGODA, Reading's pagoda is situated on the southwest extremity of Mount Penn at the terminus of Duryea Drive.  This unique structure is Reading's top tourist attraction and at an elevation of 886 feet above sea level and 620 feet above the city of Reading, it affords its many visitors an exceptional birds-eye view of the surrounding hills and suburbs of Reading, Pennsylvania."  Now why someone thought building a seven-story Japanese-style pagoda in Reading, Pennsylvania was a good idea, well I'll never know.  Built in 1908, as a luxury hotel, eventually, it fell on hard times and was purchased by the city.  Unlike the Grand View Ship Hotel, which burned down, it's still there.  

Dana Hall School For Girls 10

Unlike most of the album pages I post, this one is too large to show the whole page for position.  The top photo takes up the entire width of the page, the next three, left to right, easily fit in a second row beneath the girls on parade photo.

So, one of the tings that I find interesting about a lot of these photos is the students at Dana Hall all look so mature.  These are high schoolers, but they all look much older.  To go back to the beginning of the collection and see more, click on Dana Hall School in labels at the bottom of thr post. 

Relaxing In Suburbia

It was a golden time after all.  The war was over, the United States had one of the few strong economies in the world, unions were strong, and wages were high.  There was even money to buy the kids a piano.  Too bad rock & roll got 'em.

Stamped on the back,  "ROLLMAN'S CAMERA SHOP APR 6  1954  SHILLINGTON, PA."   What a great name for a camera shop.  I'll bet there motto was buy a roll from Rollman's.  And, as of January 2012, Rollman's was still in business.  Of course my source for that info stated that Rollman's had been in business for 55 years.  Do the math, and that means that the store opened in 1957, so clearly my source has some problems.

Shillington is a small town, a borough actually, adjacent to Reading, Pennsylvania.  In the 1950s, Reading had a population of over 100,000, today it's under 90,000.  There was a community named Shillington as early as 1860, but it didn't incorporate until 1908.  And the first elected official, Burgess Adam Rollman.  It's probable that some descendant of Adam was the camera store Rollman.  The most famous Shillingtonian (?) was author John Updike.  Updike was the valedictorian of the Shillington High class of 1950,  so it's pretty probable that the young lady in this photo either knew him, or knew of him, before he was famous.