More than a year and a half ago we published our very first Flashback Friday  postcard — a mid-20th century ‘color-tone’ view of Raleigh’s beloved Pullen Park. This week’s 100 year-old card revisits the scene from a similar vantage point, only everything was in black and white back then.

Raleigh
Have taken a room for the day & put Junior to sleep. Am so anxious to hear from you. Just left Clem’s beautiful home. Go to Norfolk and see the ocean this evening. Go thru museum this afternoon here. Am having such a lovely time but long to know how Mama & all are. Apex, N.C. reaches us.

Our anonymous correspondent sure had a busy schedule while visiting Raleigh, but had ‘such a lovely time’, nonetheless — though Norfolk seems to me a long way to go to see the ocean!

The distance from Raleigh to Norfolk implied a train trip, and caused me to notice in the Raleigh postmark the designation “Trans. Clk.” (at first it looked like “Trains Clk.”) I wonder if this could mean ‘transit clerk’, as a reference to a USPO employee who stamped postal cancellations in the mail car of a moving train? Remember those scenes in “The Great Train Robbery”?

In 1887 Raleigh philanthropist RS Pullen donated to the city the land on which Pullen Park was created. The park’s amusement center, which features the treasured Dentzel carousel (or ‘merry-go-round,’ as I always called it), reopened to the public in November 2011, following a two-year restoration.

Our postcard this week was published by Harry C. Latta, and mailed in 1911. Latta was the chief clerk at the Hotel Raleigh on Nash Square, and probably commissioned this card, among others, to be sold to hotel guests.

“Flashback Friday” is a weekly feature of Goodnight, Raleigh! in which we showcase vintage postcards depicting our historic capital city. We hope you enjoy this week-end treat!