The Barclay Blog

A Postcard-Sale Find

By Anna-Maria Manuel

Published November 14, 2022

 

I purchased this crackerjack real photo postcard — postmarked in 1927 — at a recent postcard sale in Countryside, IL. Vintage and antique postcards of Oak Park are common at postcard sales. After many years of attending these kinds of sales, I don’t know how many times I've handled postcards showing the Municipal Building, the Ontario Street entrance of the high school, and the old post office at Oak Park Avenue and Lake Street. However, real photo postcards of street scenes in Oak Park, especially from before 1930 -- the ones I find fascinating -- are tougher to find.

In this photo of downtown Oak Park, you’re looking north on Marion Street to Lake Street, where Chase Bank, then Oak Park Trust & Savings Bank, is located. The bank is the large white building in the background.

It’s amazing that many (all?) of the structures shown in this photo are still around.

 

Unfortunately, some have had major “façade-ectomies,” including the Wright Elsom Building, on the left with the bay windows. The Elsom Building from 1897 started life with a Queen Anne design. It was remodeled to its current Art Deco styling in 1930. [1]

Wright Elsom Jr. (and his father, Wright Elsom Sr.) built and owned the first auto garage in Oak Park. Elsom Jr. started in the bicycle business in the 1890s, when cycling was popular. He later transitioned to automobiles, when “horseless” carriages began appearing in the area. [2]

Philander Barclay, the Village Historian, worked for Elsom Jr. from 1898 until 1906, learning the bicycle and electrical goods business from him. In the description of a photo taken in 1898, Barclay wrote that it was his first job and that Elsom’s bicycle shop was at 117 Marian [Marion] — the building seen in the postcard pictured above. [3] That address is confirmed in the Oak Park Directory listing and the display ad, both from 1898, below.

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When Barclay started his own shop in 1906, it appears that he modeled his business after Elsom's, specializing in bicycles and electrical supplies. He stopped advertising electrical supplies in 1912. [4] Barclay took over Elsom's bicycle business, in 1913. [5]