State Hospital, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, 1917

About this postcard

The view looks across a broad lawn to a long red-brick hospital complex, with a central administration building under a tall tower and symmetrical wings stretching to either side. Trees stand before the facade, and the sky above is a pale pink and blue. Hazleton lies in the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, where large state institutions formed part of the public landscape in the early 1900s. The card was sent by a mother to her daughter Minnie in rural Michigan; her note mentions a package and a first trip to W.B., evidently Wilkes-Barre, since Minnie left, a small record of family life stretched between the coal region and the Midwest.