By Jared Olar
Library assistant
Thirteen postcards featuring scenes from Pekin’s past were added to the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room collection this summer, thanks to a donation from library volunteer Ruth Williams.
The postcards had belonged to Ruth’s late mother Freda (Wagner) Grezetich, and some of the older postcards had been collected by members of the Wagner family.
Six of the postcards are featured here. Of the six, four of them feature vintage photographs from around the time of the late 1800 or early 1900s. These vintage cards show the original plank Pekin bridge which was replaced in 1930, the pre-West Campus Pekin High School that stood where Washington School is today, the former St. Paul’s Evangelical Church that stood in the 600 block of Ann Eliza Street, and a scene of a train during flooding along the shores of Worley Lake in the vicinity of Pekin’s Auto Row.
Two cards are somewhat more recent, featuring photographs of Pekin Memorial Hospital and Pekin’s downtown in the 1970s that were taken by Pekin professional photographer Jim Deverman.
Visit the library’s Local History Room if you’d like to see the other seven postcards.
