Would you believe a covered bridge in Landsdowne? No? But there it is, the Providence Avenue Bridge, on a picture postcard postmarked 1913. It is long ago -- but not very far away, one of the covered bridges our area has lost to urbanization and economic development. The postcard was produced by Philip Moore, a photographer who worked in the area in the first decade of the century, at first in Media and later in Chestnut Hill. This particular card has his address as Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, and that suggests that the card was made rather late as Moore's cards go. (The postmark is also late, but that doesn't always tell us much. I have a Moore card that was definitely made before World War I, and probably before 1909, that was sent from Bellingham, Washington to Kansas in 1971).
Moore's cards are scenes of Delaware County, for the most part. Some were black and white photographs, but most were colored. The colored pictures are made (I assume) from Moore's black-and-white photographs. Color postcards from that era were hand-colored black and white photographs (or sometimes prints or etchings). As a rule this was done in Europe, usually in Germany, and this card is marked "made in Germany," which would date it before World War I even if the postmark did not. The craft of hand-coloring and printing was not quite a European monopoly -- I have a Seattle card from that era which seems to have been done (rather crudely) on this side of the Atlantic. But the shipping and communication costs would have been higher in Seattle.
The message was sent from Landsdowne to West Chester, and begins, "Dear Aunt Anna: We shall be very glad to see thee any day next week ... let us know which day thee is coming as I frequently go into town to shop." Past times, indeed.
But, of course, Landsdowne is not alone in its lost past. Media, too, had a covered bridge in the first decade of the century. Here is a picture from another Philip Moore postcard, black and white this time, postmarked September 1907 and probably produced at least a year earlier.
A portal view of this bridge, from a postcard produced by the Media Stationery Company, shows its multiple kingpost and Burr arch structure:
Here is something from past times in New Hope:
Long gone, this great bridge was one of Lewis Wernwag's works.
The Brandywine, too has lost its finest bridges.
This card was produced by The American News Company, probably before 1908.
This particularly fine black and white photograph was one of a series produced by the Theodore Burr Covered Bridge Society from photographs by Vera Wagner. The information on the back tells us that the bridge was last repaired in 1919 and had been removed.
Montgomery County has no covered bridges left, but perhaps that's not the end of the story. Here is a quite old picture from Norristown. A covered bridge in Norristown, you say? Yes -- it crossed the Schuylkill.
The message written on the front is evidence of the early date -- before 1908 -- and the message date and postmark, 1906, confirm this. But the image might have been old even when the card was produced.
Here are two views of a covered bridge on Perkiomen Creek, near Oaks, Montgomery County
I understand there are plans afoot to rebuild a Montgomery County covered bridge that has not existed for some time, and, if my interpretation is right, this probably is the bridge.
So -- some losses are not forever. Here, for example, is an old view of a Bucks County bridge, at an area variously known as Oakford, Neshaminy Falls, and Schofield Ford:
Schofield Ford Bridge was burnt in 1991, but its restoration is now complete, and here it is on August 2, 1997:
And so we come full circle. Long ago -- but not very far away -- there were covered bridges. Today, as we learn to treasure our heritage from that earlier time, some of them still exist -- but not without our effort to preserve and restore them.