Some weeks ago, we looked at the Train Station in Norwood, Massachusetts- from which friends
departed after a visit to that town.
Westfield is a community, adjacent to Norwood, in the leafy, suburban areas that stretch southwest of
Boston.
(I visited this place within the last decade when I had an emergency prescription filled at a pharmacy in
Westfield.)
In August of 1910, E. A. Fisher of the Independent Whip Company, mailed this postcard photograph
from Westfield.
The postcard is addressed to A.E. Bode of Ashton, Illinois.
Ashton is a small, rural village in north central Illinois.
Unfortunately, the postcard bears no other information about the correspondents.
We’re they related by business concerns, members of a postcard club, or connected by long-standing
ties of family, school, or church?
The postcard photograph was published by the “Hugh C. Leighton Company, Manufacturers” of
Portland, Maine.
In the photograph, the unpaved streets are dominated by the trolley cars.
There are hitching posts in front of the commercial establishments; the ascent of the automobile is still
in the future.
(I am whole-heartedly in favor of restoring this status for urban areas today.)
One hopes that Mr. Fisher was a man of mature years; the buggy-whip industry (and other businesses
and trades related to horse-powered transportation) began to decline and fail by the 1930’s.