Toll Road at West End along the New Basin Canal, New Orleans, 1907

Day trippin to West End

West End was very active in the early 1900s, right up to the great Hurricane of 1915 (hurricanes weren’t named at that time). The last piece of Pontchartrain Boulevard, the road on the western side of the New Basin Canal, was a toll road, the toll receipts used for road upkeep. The West End Streetcar line traveled on the east side of the canal, parallel to West End Boulevard (just out of the frame here, on the right).

Messages – windows to the past

The message on the postcard says:

I did not get a chance to send the thread sooner, but I did not get a chance to go out. Mama is very bad off. There will be another consultation today. Ed (?)/Eda (?) is here, & Ernest is leaving Sunday. Lariern left Wed and came to see us Tuesday. Love to all. (illegible) soon, Bertice.

The postcard is typical of the period, a black-and-white photo that is then hand-colored and printed. It’s interesting that Bertice wrote her message on the bottom of the front. Perhaps she was afraid that the recipient would admire the photo and not read anything on the back?

The choice of scenes for this card is also interesting. She’s conveying what appears to be bad news about “mama”, yet the postcard is of a part of town usually associated with happy experiences. West End was a big day-trip destination at the time. Of course, I’m probably reading too much into this. It’s more likely that Miss Bertice grabbed an inexpensive card at the drugstore to send a quick note, not giving much thought to the image on it. I hope mama’s consultation went OK!

Image courtesy of the Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC) at Tulane. If you’re on Facebook, you want to follow their page. They post some cool stuff, and it’s fun to look at the stories behind what they share.