NEW YORK—In the early 1900s, the picture postcard was very popular. The iconic Flatiron Building—a new high-rise in the bustling center of New York City—was among the most widely reproduced image.
As time passed, other buildings took the forefront, and picture postcards were replaced with cheaper versions that were more easily mass produced. But some of the old ones were kept and stored in shoe boxes for the next generation to discover.
About 80 years after many of the images were captured, Miriam Berman opened one of those shoe boxes. It was then that her love of the Flatiron area truly developed and her life changed. The graphic designer started becoming a historical preservationist.
“One day a friend took me to a postcard show. We walked into this ballroom, and it was filled with shoe boxes. A grand ballroom filled with tables and shoe boxes on them. Each shoebox was a different subject,” said Berman at Madison Square Park in late May.
Her friends were into collecting postcards of the Jersey Shore, but Berman wanted something different, “Somebody said I was in an important building, so I said maybe I'll see if there are some Flatiron buildings,” she said.
Berman began thumbing through the boxes and noticed the Flatiron Building and the Empire State Building were the most reproduced. “I’ve never [collected] in my life. As I started to collect I also started to see that there was a subject on Madison Square,” she said. She purchased a few and began her collection.
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