Curt Teich Postcard Archives leaving Lake County after 35 years
A renowned postcard collection offering a colorful view of the cultural landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries officially is moving out of Lake County.
The Lake County Forest Preserve District's 35-year oversight of the Curt Teich Postcard Archives Collection ended Tuesday with the vote of the full board to transfer the enormous collection to the Newberry Library in Chicago.
"This is a momentous occasion," board President Ann Maine said. "We spent a lot of time, a lot of meetings and a lot of diligence finding the best place."
Since 1982, the postcard collection has been housed as part of the Lake County Discovery Museum. As the museum is being relocated to the district's Libertyville office, it was determined the cost could be reduced by $800,000 for the required storage facilities if the postcard collection was transferred. The move also would ensure there were greater resources to care for the collection and expand its available public reach, officials determined.
Newberry President David Spadafora lauded Lake County for its "expertise, skill, passion and creativity" in overseeing and expanding the "remarkable" collection.
"We intend to build upon this legacy with the same commitment to connecting scholars and the general public with the tangible evidence of the past," he said.
The gift to Newberry will include an endowment valued at $527,258 as of July.
The backbone of the collection is the industrial archives of the Curt Teich Co., which operated in Chicago from 1898 to 1978 as the world's largest printer of viewing and advertising postcards. The archives contained 360,000 images related to 10,000 towns and cities in the U.S., Canada and 115 countries.
It was rescued from the trash by Teich's son, Ralph, a Lake Forest resident, who recognized the significance and need for a public home. With several additions over the years, the collection has grown to include about 2.5 million postcards featuring a range of subjects and genres, such as rural scenes, urban skylines, tourist attractions and emerging industries.
"It will be safe and secure for posterity," Ralph Teich's widow, Beth, told the forest district board.
Museum officials said the collection offers "tremendous study and research opportunities" and will align with the library's strengths, including local and family history, travel and exploration, Chicago and the Midwest and the history of printing, publishing and typography.
By April, reference service of the contents is expected to be available, but access to the materials will be by appointment only initially.
Uninterrupted access is available to 30,000 digitized postcard views at Illinois Digital Archives.