Wish You Were Here

"THIS IS WHERE I EAT," A STUDENT NAMED KENT wrote on the front of a postcard of College Hall that he mailed to Cleveland in September 1911 (bottom row, third from left). The hand-colored picture is one of several hundred postcards of Dartmouth and Hanover collected in Rauner Library. Whether showcasing single scenes, panoramas or fold-out assemblages, postcards have conveyed more than personal notes since they originated in the 1890s. "They create icons," says Dartmouth geography professor Mona Domosh. "They help fix an image, a set way of seeing." Even the College power plant, built in 1898, once merited its own postcard (bottom row, left). "That was a sign of how modern Dartmouth was," says Domosh. "Now we think industry should be hidden." Banished or vanished, views change. But one perspective holds constant: Postcards continue to link people to places and each other.