East San Diego
Looking east on El Cajon Boulevard from 43rd Street in 1910.

The John R. and Jane Adams Postcard Collection, which is housed in the Special Collections Department of the Malcolm A. Love Library at San Diego State University, consists of approximately 200,000 postcards. The scope of the collection is wide ranging, both geographically and topically, with numerous specimens from major postcard publishers. The collection covers the entire spectrum of postcard history, filed in seven categories: San Diego, California, U.S. Views, Publisher, Foreign Views, Topical, Card Types, and Miscellaneous. Our exhibits focus on San Diego and its environs (showcased in Special Collections) and California (showcased in the Zig-Zag-Corridor).

Dr. and Mrs. Adams donated nearly all of the postcards to the University Library from 1989 to 1999. Dr. Adams - one of the University's most distinguished professors of English - and his wife were major benefactors of the University who had long contributed important gifts to the Library, including a substantial Henry James Collection. Dr. and Mrs. Adams assembled their postcard collection through meticulous searching over a period of sixty years.

San Diego State College, in the 1940s at its new location.

Interstate 5 and 395 (now 163) with view of downtown San Diego, in the 1980s.

The Adams Postcard Collection has a detailed finding aid (an archival inventory) that includes an index. There is a particularly comprehensive collection of postcards representing San Diego and California, as might be expected considering the donors' sixty-year residence in San Diego. More than 4,500 postcards of San Diego County, which are housed in fifteen boxes, constitute an especially rich resource for the pictorial history of the region.

Text taken partially from Martha McPhail's article "California Here We Come: The Adams Postcard Collection at San Diego State University" (appeared in: Stevens, Norman D. [e.]: Postcards in the Library: Invaluable Visual Resources. The Haworth Press, Inc.: New York/London, 1995, pp. 51-58).

Thanks to:
Martha McPhail (Cataloging Librarian, Love Library), the staff and student assistants from Government Publications for their assistance in helping us locate pertinent and interesting maps; Natalie Pastor (Library Instruction/Graphic Services) for designing our wonderful posters (in record time!) Most of all, we'd like to thank our indispensable student assistants Autumn Ninteman, Angélica Montes, Viktoria Nikolova and Hugo Hurtado for their hard work, reliability, and creativity, as well as the staff of Special Collections for their input and support, Cristina Favretto, Kathi Neal, Jossie Chavez and Elke Zobl (exhibit curator).