Portrait of Route 66: Images from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives by T. Lindsay Baker (review)

The Curt Teich Postcard Archive, a collection of some 2.5 million items from the company best known for its "Greetings From" postcards, opened recently to researchers at the Newberry Library, Chicago. T. Lindsay Baker's Portrait of Route 66: Images from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives mines a subset of the collection: the book presents a carefully curated selection of 112 postcards and attendant production materials dating between 1920 and the late 1950s that promoted businesses along the famed American highway.

Portrait of Route 66 is thoughtfully designed and impeccably organized. Individual chapters, distinguished by color-coded headings, are dedicated to each state traversed by Route 66 (Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California). Full-color spreads juxtapose postcards, printed full-size, with the client-submitted photographs of roadside businesses from which they derive. Often the photographs contain production notes and Curt Teich staff artists' enhancements; for example, telephone poles are painted out and lettering is sharpened. Each chapter highlights approximately ten to fifteen postcards; the California chapter contains the most (twenty) and Kansas the fewest (five). Numbered highway symbols accompanying the text indicate business locations on a large illustrated map that follows the introduction. In short, this gorgeous book resembles a travel guide of coffee-table proportions.

Baker's lucent introduction provides a clear overview of Curt Teich's production process while his brief chapter texts introduce select mom-and-pop shops in each state. Disappointingly, his text says little about the images themselves, focusing instead on the businesses they promoted. Frequently, Baker notes "heavy edits were made" to indicate alterations to the client-submitted photographs, but fails to specify those edits, leaving readers to scrutinize the postcards for sometimes obscure changes. Most often, he merely notes the quantity of postcards ordered, Curt Teich's internal job number, and the date of the order. Interested readers will observe that Arizona business owners commonly requested blue skies, that west Texans seemed particularly insecure about their location on the prairie, regularly requesting the addition of grass and trees not actually present, and that New Mexico's postcards were brilliantly colored to a degree unmatched by those ordered for other states, if those included in this book are any indication. An in-depth discussion of these alterations and their meaning would add significant value to the text.

Ultimately the book is not unlike the postcards it presents—colorful and eye-catching, but light on interpretation. For the Route 66 enthusiast or those prone to wanderlust, however, it offers an exquisitely designed grand tour of motels, restaurants, and gas stations preserved in postcards that might best serve as a road-trip companion for modern-day adventurers traveling west on the Mother Road.