Welcome to Readdressing the Past!
Readdressing the Past seeks to analyze the history of Carleton College’s buildings through postcards. It shows how the campus changed over time and offers a glimpse into Carleton life in the early 1900s.
Our project focuses on the unique 9 buildings on campus and highlights their unique stories.
Why Postcards?
Which buildings stayed the same? Which ones were renovated and repurposed? Which ones were demolished and largely forgotten? It turns out, postcards are a surprisingly good way to answer these questions. A lot of the early photographs of Carleton’s campus were documented by postcards. Carleton’s postcard collection contains 231 postcards. It suggests that Carleton started using postcards in the early 1900s, although the earliest photograph in the collection was taken in 1887, just two decades after Carleton’s founding in 1866. This was when Goodsell Observatory was built to replace the old observatory. It is the second oldest building after Willis Hall that still stands today!
