Hopewell	Princeton
Philadelphia & Reading RR Depot and Train Station	Nassau Street Looking East, Sage Tower
West Broad Street	Palmer Square and Tavern
Greenwood Avenue Looking North	The Nassau Inn, J.B. Renwick, Prop.
Looking From Ralston Heights	Princeton College, Birdseye View
Saint Michael’s Orphanage	Alexander Hall, Princeton University
Labaw Residence on Louellen Street	Horse and Buggy, Nassau & Witherspoon Street
Hopewell Dainties (The Chocolate Factory)	Cuyler Hall, Princeton University
Hopewell Bakery & Cash Grocery, C.H. Allen, Prop.	Skating on Loch Carnegie
Columbia Avenue	Blair Hall and Campbell Hall, Princeton University
Ralston Heights, Stairway to Great Walled Garden	Princeton Inn
Hart Avenue	Van Deventer Avenue
Blackwell Avenue Looking South	Birdseye View of Palmer Square
Old School Babtist Church, John Hart Memorial	Football Game, circa 1910, Princeton University

Colophon, notes from the prop.

Purely for enjoyment, this-page a small curated collection of vintage postcards of scenes from Hopewell Borough and Princeton, New Jersey (with nod to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, first performed at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre on January 22, 1938.)

I’ve lived in the Hopewell Valley for many years. Historic Hopewell Boro, enveloped by the township of the same name and just 8 miles from bustling Princeton with its world-class university, is a postage stamp-sized .72 square mile locality of quiet tree-lined streets and Victorian architecture. A notable Revolutionary War crossroads, in June 1778, Washington’s army encamped on the farmland surrounding “the signer” John Hart’s home on the north side of town, just prior to The Battle of Monmouth.

The masthead up-top is an original photo-illustration that I created in Photoshop, modeled on the Philadelphia & Reading Train Station in Hopewell. (Were you to visit, the landscape looks a bit different, and, by the way, other Victorian-era train stations are of identical design.) Built in 1876, the Hopewell P&R has been on the state and federal registers of historic places since 1984; passenger service ceased in 1982; still an active freight line; today the station is used as a community center.

A note for collectors: While I much appreciate the charm of well-traveled ephemera, I instead decided to show these postcards as closer-to-new, doing some photo-restoration to each and also taking a measure of “artistic license” with some of them. I’ve watermarked my logo as reminder — should you download & save these images — that they may vary somewhat from the originals (in cropping, tonality, colors, etc.) ~CJ Craig

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