Life & Times



View of Vandruff Island from Black Hawk Tower

Vandruff’s Island lies just outside Rock Island’s border, with this view from Black Hawk’s Watch Tower being enjoyed by thousands through the decades.  This postcard, from the Augustana College Library … [ Continued



Model T Touring Car – Rock Island to California

Second Avenue & 14th Street  Sometimes there’s a postcard that allows our imagination to play.  This is one such card.  It was hard to identify, but there were clues.  First, … [ Continued



Black Hawk Watch Tower Amusement Park

Black Hawk Road near 17th Street Here is a peek at Rock Island’s own homegrown amusement park.  Like Chicago’s Riverview, New York’s Coney Island, and the much later Disneyland, the … [ Continued



Rock Island County Tuberculosis Sanitarium

2122 25th Avenue  The plague of tuberculosis, usually called TB, is all but forgotten, thanks to modern antibiotics. As recently as the early 20th century, it was the leading cause … [ Continued



Odd Fellows Building

1716-18 Fourth Avenue  On October 10, 1912, the International Order of Odd Fellows, UCAL Lodge #608, gathered at 1716-18 Fourth Avenue to lay the cornerstone for their new $50,000 building. … [ 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



Masonic Temple

420 18th Street This circa 1915 postcard shows the Masonic Temple at the northwest corner of 18th Street and Fifth Avenue that had been built only two years earlier.  It … [ Continued