Customer Reviews

Greyhound in Postcards: Buses, Depots, and Post Houses

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bus and Greyhound fans will enjoy this selection of just under three hundred postcards. Each page has four photos and it's a pity they are not all in color, as it is every other spread has eight in color. None of the cards are dated so a pleasant few hours can be spent with a car and this bus guide Greyhound Buses 1914-2000 Photo Archive to approximately put a year on each postcard, there are plenty of Silversides, GM PDA's 4101, 4104 and stunning Scenicruisers to spot.

The postcard reproduction is pretty good, too and I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the cards have a drop shadow on them which gives the pages extra sparkle. The typography and graphics on the cover, title, intro and content pages are rather dull though, this seems a common book design problem for transport publishers.

Fans of Moderne or Streamline architecture will also enjoy this book. Strangely this aspect of the buildings is only casually mentioned in the intro. In the Thirties Greyhound wanted an up-to-date look and decided to build dozens of streamline bus stations across the Nation. W S Arrasmith of the Louisville architectural firm Wischmeyer, Arrasmith and Elswick designed many of the large city ones. Fans of these buildings can read all about Arrasmith in this comprehensive book: The Streamline Era Greyhound Terminals: The Architecture of W.S. Arrasmith. Other local architects, carefully controlled by Greyhound, designed smaller units. The book has eighty-seven (by my reckoning) postcards of these wonderful buildings and they look just super.

Despite the circumstances of the Thirties and early Forties what could be grander than travelling in a streamline Greyhound bus and arriving at a gleaming streamline depot on Fifth and Main, the lovely postcards in this book capture some of the magic.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

As an Australian most of my knowledge of American towns is as much how the names of the towns feature in "Pop" or popular music. Reading this book I was please to relate to so many town names and how their locations featured in the Interstate or Long Distance routes of so many Greyhound Services.
Then of course there was the photos or part photos of various era Greyhond coaches; a real thrill for a bus buff.
Very pleasant light reading.