Antique & Vintage Postcards

Someone with a sharp wit and a pencil has turned this stately black-and-white view of Hayes Hall at Ohio State University into a comedy broadside: scrawled across the bottom in bold hand is the quip "Hummer, Here is where the boys learn to make money (shops) & the girls to spend it" — with an arrow pointing up at the building and the aside "(where I have foundry work)" — a delightfully candid glimpse of early collegiate humor addressed to a Mr. H.J. Carroll at 161 Aetna St., Cleveland. Hayes Hall, a grand Richardsonian Romanesque brick structure, anchors a campus still largely open lawn in this circa 1905 Rotograph Co. image, printed in Germany and distributed through New York. The card appears never to have been postally used — no stamp, no postmark — making it likely hand-delivered or kept as a keepsake.