Postcards from the past

کارت پستال از زمانی پیش

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Participants •NGO's •Context •Institutions •Customs •Safety •Community Design •Historic Preservation •
Posted by Rezwan • Mar 10, 2009 • (0) Comments •
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My Mom sent me a link to this website featuring historic postcards from America. "Take a look at the aftermath of the Collinwood school fire (March 4, 1908)," she said. "We were just talking about it."

This website triggers a few planning issues:

1. The tradition of sending postcards
2. Turning the ordinary into icons
3. Historic Preservation
4. Genealogy societies
5. Evolution of safety laws

The tradition of sending postcards

Sending postcards has the effect of promoting the various places and events that they depict, a plus for civic promotion and tourism. Eventually, as this site shows, the postcards themselves become collectors items and can show historical changes.

Turning the ordinary into icons

They also show what buildings, sites and events are considered "worthy" for promotion. What I like about American culture is that so many things are considered worthy. This is one area where Iranian postcard makers and senders could be inspired. The postcard collection is filled with great city planning related images. Buildings, street-scapes, monuments, ordinary scenes, aerial views.

Historic Preservation

It's neat to look back in time at evolving landscapes through postcards. Many people feel this way. Planners thus have an opportunity to leverage people's own self-interest toward promoting historic preservation. There are many more tools at our disposal than we are conscious of.

Note: For preservation, actual physical postcards are important. After watching the film "Life After People", it has become clear to me how ephemeral the electronic records and media that we all collect are. The internet is good for multiplying media and making it accessible to everyone, but it is not good for preserving it for history.

Genealogical Societies

This phenomenon is likewise of interest to planners. People are fascinated by their own history, and will go to great lengths to document this history, which intersects with common history. In pursuit of this history, organizations such as USGenWeb have sprung up.
As you can see, USGenWeb has a number of projects for documenting the past, and people's intersection with courts, churches, tombstones, census reports and so forth. Several important points here:

• This is a private endeavor, not funded by the government, but using government data. E.g., people are motivated to document and preserve their own past.
• Are their similar sites for Iranians of this nature?
• What are the issues for Iranians having a similar genealogical society? (privacy, lack of data, etc.)

I don't know, but I've been told [source?] that when the internet first started up, the primary uses were people searching for pornography or genealogy. I don't know what the percentage is today. Interestingly, both of these internet uses are related to human procreation. Procreation is all about human genetic code. So...computer code is being used to document and further genetic code. Of course.

Evolution of Safety Laws

The history and evolution of safety laws can be written in the landscape, and recorded by postcards.

The Collinwood fire is a watershed event for public safety and fire law in the united states.

It was the worst school fire in US History.

In this fire, 172 children and 3 adults lost their lives.

After the fire, laws throughout the country changed:

The remains of the Lake View School were demolished, and in its place a memorial garden was planned for the site. A new school, Collinwood Memorial Elementary School, was built adjacent to the site of the disaster, and incorporated many features that were lacking in the original building's plans.

Included in the new school were fire safe stairwells and a central alarm system. The building was also made of steel framing and other fire safe materials.

The new school was torn down in 2004, but a plaque remains on the site even as new development is added to the area.

The Collinwood fire also led to a nationwide effort to change doors at public buildings, so that they could open outwards. It also led to the mandate of having "panic bar" latches on doors in schools.

Fire safety procedures are not without cost, however, and this is important for Iranian planners to keep in mind. In the case of Collinwood, it cost the city it's independence:

Within two years of the fire, voters approved the annexation of Collinwood into Cleveland as the community was unable to sufficiently guarantee fire safety resources for its residents.

Here is some archival footage from the library of congress record. Note the heartbreaking burial of 19 unidentifiable children's bodies in a mass grave.
Unfortunately, the history of planning is marked with such tragedies. People do not tend to act until something goes really really wrong. The 175 martyrs of the Collinwood fire have made it possible for cities to pass tougher fire laws, and this in turn has saved untold lives. Over a hundred years later, the echo of their lives is still with us, embodied in the law and public safety norms.

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