Sample brochure covers out of the Ephemera Collection: a late 1920s railroad brochure; a brochure for Jacksonville showing C. Adrian Pillars’ sculpture of “Spiritualized Life – Winged Victory” from 1924; and a 1925 brochure for Miami.
POSTCARDS
Tourism is well represented in the graphic arts of our postcard and brochure collections. As the twentieth century recedes more and more in time, these collections preserve the rise of the tourist and vacation industry in Florida, as well as the state’s efforts to foster investment and immigration. Studies on development, architecture, suburbia, attractions, and “boosterism” all benefit from research in these materials.
Our postcard collections have been growing over the past decade and now contain some 30,000 examples of Florida views running from the 1880s through 1980. The single largest collection is the recently donated John Patrick Moran Postcard Collection of 10,446 cards, which encompasses everything from traditional postcard packets and color lithographs to “Wish you Were Here” greeting cards. Next in size is the general postcard collection (@ 5,225 cards) that includes many early undivided-back postcards from pre-1907 as well as an abundance of cards that contain messages and were mailed. Of similar size is the Gary Monroe Postcard Collection (4,889 cards), especially representative of Miami, Miami Beach, and St. Petersburg. The Lee Harrison Postcard Collection (2,476 cards) focuses on Sarasota, Florida, and the Jerry Chicone Jr. Collection (@ 1,450 cards) on Orlando. Recent additions include a donation by David Snedeker of the “Beautiful Florida” series from the 1920s and a Florida postcard collection transferred to us from the University of Kentucky Library with almost 5,000 cards. The latter is arranged alphabetically by place and contains many small towns in Florida.
Altogether, the collections provide a wide array of images of cityscapes, agricultural production, tourist destinations, hotels, motels, and restaurants, and represent all eras of postcard production, including early photographic, divided-back, color lithography, linen-texture, and modern glossy. About 10 percent of the cards have messages, and there are even a few runs with messages from the same correspondent.
Many of the people who have helped us to build these collections also contributed other souvenir and memorabilia materials to the Yonge Library, including the Jerry Chicone Jr. Florida Citrus Label Collection (3,000 items) and the David Snedeker Collection of Florida Stereoview Cards (2,072 items). Lee Harrison is the principal person responsible for assembling the 8,000 tourism brochures in the Florida Ephemera Collection.
Brochures and Ephemera
The Florida Tourism Ephemera Collection, number some 8,000 individually-labeled items. Brochures and related promotional or souvenir materials range in date from 1854 to 1979 and are arranged in the following categories: Cities (99 binders, 2,502 items); Railroads, Hotels, Steamships and Bus Lines (including the Florida East Coast and Plant systems) (25 binders, 700 items); State Publications on Tourism, Immigration and Agriculture (16 binders, 260 items); Guides, Maps, View Books, Postcards, Letters (15 binders, 950 items); Hotels, Motels and Restaurants (9 binders, 823 items); Attractions (17 binders, 1,789 items); Illustrated Adventure Stories (1 binder, 13 items); and Government Documents and Miscellaneous Materials (10 binders, no count). Only a small number of items are online, but samples can be see in our Come Visit exhibit in the UF Digital collections and also in teh Adam Matthew digital database Leisure, Travel, and Mass Culture. An online spreadsheet provides an index to contents, with textual descriptions of items, their identification numbers, and dates of publication.
In addition, there is a digital inventory of the collection with descriptions of contents. Researchers can look for specific types of materials, such as viewbooks, maps, and postcards, or can browse the written descriptions. Whenever possible we have also provided dates or date ranges for when items were published. The best described items are the promotional materials for towns and cities.