Page 106 - Demo

First Capitol of Indiana Territory and District of Louisiana, Vincennes, Ind.Thousands every year visit this building where the first Indiana laws were enacted.Aloysius A. %u201cAllie%u201d Arnold was a well known figure around Vincennes, Indiana. He was first a printer, then a writer and for the Vincennes Capitalnewspaper. Later, he became the Vincennes SunCommercial%u2019s ad salesman and reporter. At various times, Arnold served as City Clerk, County Clerk, County Assessor, even as a State Representative. He was truly a man with a great deal of enthusiasm for all things local, a passion that inspired his newspaper columns and the radio show he hosted. It was not surprising then, that in 1936, the year Vincennes%u2019 George Rogers Clark Memorial on the banks of the Wabash River was dedicated, that Arnold was instrumental in creating a series of postcards depicting local landmarks.Each of the cards featured a familiar scene around Vincennes, and all were sold by F.W. Woolworth and other stores in the area. They were so popular they were still available at local retail establishments as late as the 1950s. This collection contains a dozen that are Maximum Cards. Each is marked on the back, %u201cA.A. Arnold, Vincennes, Ind.,%u201d indicating that Arnold was their distributor. They also have the printer%u2019s mark%u2014%u201cGenuine Curteich-Chicago.%u201d For many years, Curt & Co. was one of the largest postcard publishers in the United States, and it was their practice to assign a unique number to each design they printed. The twelve Arnold cards in this collection are numbered on the front (picture side) in the lower right corner. Most have a %u201c6A-H%u201d prefix, with the %u201c6A%u201d indicating the card was first published in 1936. The %u201cH%u201d refers to the C.T. Art-Colortone process, which used a linenfinish stock and transformed black-and-white photos into vibrant colors by using a special fivecolor printing technique.Allie Arnold died in 1971, at the age of 82, but his postcards have remained popular collectibles into the twenty-first century.