A Healthy and Productive New Year Like It's 1911!

As we make the transition into 2011, let's reflect upon our traditions, enriched with art and personality through direct humanly touch, prior to the digital age, when most people can design something by clicks of the mouse in Adobe Photoshop (not to discredit current times entirely). Let's take a journey to 1911, as the above postcard creatively exhibits the year in lace. A number of hand-colored and sometimes embossed postcards with poetic greetings, penmanship, and ornate illustrations were sent to family and friends, and were indeed sold in Queens in your corner convenience shop or in soda fountain drugstores such as the former Sutton Hall Pharmacy on Ascan Ave in Forest Hills. Queens became part of the City of NY on January 1, 1898, and on Dec 24, 1901, "post card" was authorized by the act of congress, and was allowed to be printed on the back of the undivided postcards of the era (previously known as private mailing cards). Postcards were a novelty each year, and the medium was relatively new within itself.

We wish everyone a year filled with health, happiness, and great productivity personally. May historic preservation be productive for Forest Hills, Rego Park, and our neighbors who are advocating for landmarking and the general preservation and creative reuse of the built cornerstones of our neighborhoods, which create the very essence of an appealing and diverse city. Let's be neighborly, and progressively defend our neighborhoods from greedy developers by expanding our coalition of volunteers and supporters. Let's not forget where we came from as a nation, in order to have a greater understanding of the principles we are built upon, to pave the way for a culturally and architecturally richer future.