Cardboard America Project - #1: First Baptist Church - Pontiac, Michigan

Welcome to the Cardboard America Project. My goal here is simple: share old postcards from my collection and try to find what it currently looks like. Enough jabbering. Here's the first entry.

"Holding forth the Word of Life since 1821"
Sunday School - 9:45 a.m.
Morning Worship - 10:45 a.m.
Youth fellowship groups meets - 5:40 p.m.
Evening Service - 7:00 p.m.
Mid-week prayer service - Wed. 7:30 p.m.


Now:

Now:
View Cardboard America Project in a larger map Still there. Looks pretty much the same. The sign on the top right of the postcard is gone and

Blossomtime 1969

Here we have a program from Blossomtime 1969. Blossomtime is an annual festival that takes place in Southwestern Michigan. Here's a little background from the Blossomtime Festival website. The 1969 Blossomtime Queen was Carla Sherrill.  

Blossomtime 1959

Here we have a program from Blossomtime 1959. Blossomtime is an annual Festival that takes place in Southwest Michigan. Here's a little background from the Blossomtime Festival website:

In 1923, a local fruit processor, Fred L. Granger, and the Reverend Joshua O. Randall conceived the idea of a floral parade to promote the expanding local business .They secured assistance from the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club and the Exchange Club. Initially, the publicity consisted of the circulation of a decorated truck around Chicago's "loop" inviting people to come to southwest Michigan. The first Grand Floral Parade was held on a Wednesday afternoon. The second parade was held on May 14, 1924. It included 30 floats, two marching bands and hundreds of private automobiles, which made a tour of the new "Blossom lanes" of southwest Michigan.

Also in 1924, Catherine Burrell of Benton Harbor was chosen by newspaper ballots to reign as the first Blossomtime Queen. In subsequent years communities began to hold their own contests selecting queens to represent them in a collective pageant for the title of Miss Blossomtime.

The festival temporarily ceased in 1943 with the advent of World War II. In 1951 the St. Joseph and Benton Harbor Chamber of Commerce created Blossomtime, Inc., a non-profit organization of some 75 members governed by a board of directors. The first post-war parade in 1952 attracted approximately 105,000 spectators who viewed 56 units.

The Blossomtime Festival is still going strong. This year's events will take place on March 14th. You can catch a glimpse of the official 1959 program and festivities after the jump.

Motel Monday: The Orange Roof

This weeks Motel Monday theme is all about Howard Johnson's Motor Lodges. Howard Johnson's was originally a restaurant and then expanded successfully (until the late 1970s) into the Motel Business. They are still a chain of hotels all of the globe but these postcards are dedicated to their motel past and their signature orange A-framed roof. See all 12 images after the jump.

Here's a little history (from Wikipedia):

By 1954, there were 400 Howard Johnson's restaurants in 32 states. About 10% were company-owned turnpike restaurants that were extremely profitable. The rest were franchises.

Also that year, the company decided to open the first Howard Johnson's motor lodge in Savannah, Georgia. The company employed architects Rufus Nims and Karl Koch to oversee the design of the rooms and gate lodge. Nims had previously worked with the company to design Howard Johnson's restaurants. The restaurant's trademark simple Simon and Pieman was now joined by a lamplighter character in the firm's marketing of its motels. According to cultural historians, the chain became synonymous with travel among American motorists and vacationers in part because of Johnson's ubiquitous outdoor advertising displays.

In 1959, Howard Deering Johnson, who had founded and managed the company since 1925, turned the reins over to his son, then 26-year-old Howard Brennan Johnson. Howard Deering Johnson would observe his son's control of the company until his death in 1972. He died at the age of 76.

By 1961, the year the Howard Johnson's Company went public, there were 605 restaurants, 265 of them company owned and 340 franchised, as well as 88 franchised Howard Johnson's motor lodges in 32 states and the Bahamas.

In 1961, Johnson hired famed New York chefs Pierre Franey and Jacques Pépin to oversee food development at the company's main commissary in Brockton, Massachusetts. Franey and Pépin developed recipes for the company's signature dishes that could be flash frozen and delivered across the country, guaranteeing a consistent product.

Haverhill, Massachusetts

Ithaca, New York