Here’s an interesting old postcard, I recently came across… Over the years of running this site, it’s not too often I come across a postcard, I haven’t seen before, but this one is one of those rare times…
Sandwich, despite being the seat of Essex County, looked to be a pretty small and quiet place…
I believe that the postcard shot was taken from here, but it’s hard to tell without much reference… (Sorry for the link, but the embedding feature with Street View seems to be broken for the last couple of days…)
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Wow, the survey even has the Dominion house on the opposite side of the street from where it is today. Must have been before it burned down and was rebuilt on its current site.
Mill Street looking towards to river? So the baby house would be on the end on the left? of the card? Mmm hard to see with the trees…
Sorry… That map is a bit older than the post card view. 1880’s I believe…
Guessing it is a little closer to Sandwich, across Peter…
Cool.. my street (Indian) did not even exist then. I guess it doesn’t really exist anymore either
Just a question,
Where do you find the historical plot plans that you used in this post.
Is there a web-site?
Sorry if this question has already been answered before.
As the road narrows in the photograph, could it not possibly be a view looking south away from the river?
But then again the last viewable interchange has heavy left turn traffic, suggesting it could be a north view as well…
I think this is a view from Mill Street just before the intersection with Russell (in the picture) looking towards the river. The picket fence at left borders the lawn of the Duff-Baby House
The shadows from the trees are mostly directly below the trees, signifying noon, and extending a bit to the right. That puts the south to the left and verifies Andrew’s instinct that the view is to the west and to the river.
There’s not a lot of detail to be seen at the end of the street but there clearly is a light colour band running horizontally which would be consistent with a river reflecting light and dark edged shores above and below the band.
The left bottom quarter of the picture shows a picket fence, a sidewalk on left only, a utility pole, a road intersection and, off in the distance, slightly left,, a roofline of a building which is not consistent with residential structure.
Noteworthy, there are no further residential buildings or utility poles along the street, nor stores to be seen, which would be there if this was a view of Mill Street at Peter looking west toward the main intersection of Mill and Sandwich/Bedford.
Around 1910 there were houses on both sides of Mill Street at Peter.
Your postcard is a great find, Andrew !
I agree with rws as to the point of view of the postcard. And yes, great find Andrew!
rws, sounds good to me.. 🙂
I think the picket fence is the best clue. Other than that there’s not much to go on…
Interesting to wonder why someone thought this would make a good postcard in the first place. It doesn’t seem very interesting yet, a century on, we get a peek at a typical side street in Sandwich and we are all discussing it. Good find! It’s like Google street view 1910. Now if I can only get it to pan around…
WOW! great postcard Andrew!
I’m gonna agree with rws on this. If you take the google guy and put him right on the intersection of Sandwich and Mill facing the river and zoom in as much as you can….you get this exact same shot.
That roofline you see rws, is probably the tannery.
Very cool post card. As was already stated, not interesting perhaps for the time, but for us it is an excellent shot. Dirt road and all!
I think it would be interesting at the time….attractive even. Back then Sandwich was a nice place for Detroiters to escape the smokey, hot hustle and bustle of the big city. What a great way to demonstrate a nice relaxing spot. Plus….I bet that looks a hell of alot prettier in colour!
I live in this neighborhood the street names are moved around. andrew where could I find the plot plans from this so I can see the rest of the area around my house back then