Waterloo Public Library is located in Waterloo Iowa. Pictures shown here are scanned pictures of postcards, donated to the Waterloo Public Library by Nancy Law.

A Little History:

It is with pleasure that I am sharing my antique Iowa postcards with the Waterloo Public Library. I have never lived in Iowa, but started collecting Iowa postcards as a way to learn more about my Iowa heritage. My great-great-grandparents settled in Black Hawk County, Iowa in 1868, living first in Hudson and later moving to Waterloo, where family members continued to live for 135 years.

Postcards are "snapshots of time" that give collectors insights into how people lived when the cards were produced. My Aunt Marian introduced me to the world of antique postcards when she gave me a postcard of the Black Hawk County courthouse where both of my grandparents worked (my grandfather was Mayor of Waterloo and my grandmother was the Chief Juvenile Probation Officer of Black Hawk County), and since that time I have been determined to discover what life in Iowa was like around the turn of the century. My grandparents both graduated from the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) in 1904, so that year became my starting point.

Some of the earliest postcards I purchased were of the East Waterloo High School from which my grandfather, father and all of their siblings graduated and the State University of Iowa. After my grandparents got married in 1910, they purchased a home in Highland, which is now a Waterloo Historic District, but then was a new subdivision. Needless to say, I was thrilled when I found postcards of not only Highland, but the street where they lived. Through the years I have collected antique postcards of many other places in Waterloo that were important in the lives of my family and their friends, such as the James Black Dry Goods store where my grandmother shopped and my father worked during high school, the Electric Park ballroom where my father and his friends loved to dance, and the Rath Packing Company where many family friends worked. I have also purchased postcards of Iowa towns where family members visited and/or lived around the turn of the century, such as Des Moines and Cedar Falls.

I hope that Iowans will enjoy my antique postcards and use them (as I have) as a way to better understand how our ancestors have lived for the past 100 years. I must confess that when I now look at antique postcards showing women walking in heavy, floor-length dresses and men driving horse-drawn carriages over muddy streets, which was the only means of getting from one place to another, I no longer simply see images of that long ago time. Instead, I stand in awe of my ancestors as I think of the many difficulties they faced and then surmounted in their everyday lives.

--Nancy Law.

This site contains pictures of postcards with an undetermined copyright for public domain use. If you feel the Library is infringing in your rights, inform us at biblioteca@wplwloo.lib.ia.us and the pictures will be immediately removed, when provided with accurate claims.