Postcards From Home



Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Depot

Foot of 17th Street NOTE:  The pictured postcard is not the one originally featured with this article. From its earliest days, Rock Island was a city of railroads.   With the … [ Continued



Beth Israel Synagogue

2128-30 Third Avenue This stately building on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 22nd Street usually arouses curiosity.   Although now it’s a sports bar, it still evokes its religious past … [ Continued



Wagner House

904 23rd Street Postcards of houses are not easily found.  And when they are found, the pictured house is often unidentified or  has been demolished.  Relatively few house postcards were … [ Continued



Spencer Square, Part 2

2nd -3rd Avenues; 19th -20th Streets An earlier article told the first half of the story of Spencer Square in downtown Rock Island — how the square block between 19th … [ Continued



Schocker Paper Company

1918 First Avenue It is quite a lovely building, this home of Schocker Paper Company.  You could easily imagine it today, converted to apartments, with wide windows overlooking Rock Island’s … [ Continued



Rock Island County Courthouse

3rd Avenue and 15th Street What a beautiful courthouse!  This postcard, from Dr. Mark Buckrop, never fails to elicit oohs and ahhs when people see it for the first time.   … [ Continued



FAREWELL – Night Scene Second Avenue

Second Avenue, East from 17th Street “Arrived in Rock Island today. This is near our hotel and the train station.” It is a typical message for this enduringly popular postcard … [ Continued



Mississippi River Scene

Shannon Hall’s extensive postcard collection is the source of this postcard captioned, “Mississippi River, Rock Island, Illinois.”   It was created by Detroit Publishing Company, which operated from about 1895 to … [ Continued