Detail of ships in port from the Greeting from Milwaukee postcard collection

The Thomas and Jean Ross Bliffert Postcard Collection consists of about 12,000 postcards on a broad range of local, regional, national and international subjects. Thomas and Jean Ross Bliffert, who have been actively collecting postcards since 1945, donated the collection to the UW-Milwaukee Libraries beginning in September 1998. Although the collection is still being processed, it may be accessed upon request in Special Collections at the UWM Libraries. Greetings from Milwaukee: Selections from the Thomas and Jean Ross Bliffert Collection is a virtual collection of selected images from the larger postcard collection, and serves as an introduction to the overall collection. Due to the Blifferts’ interest in historic images of their hometown, the collection contains many postcards with images of Milwaukee. This digital presentation focuses on a portion of those Milwaukee postcards produced primarily by Milwaukee publishers. From the late 19th century to the 1960s, there were numerous postcard publishers active in Milwaukee. The two largest, the L. L. Cook Co. and the E. C. Kropp Co., produced thousands of cards on every imaginable subject. Most cards have images of parks, buildings, street scenes, churches, hotels and restaurants, making them invaluable as a resource on historic Milwaukee. Many of these postcards show scenes of Milwaukee that are now vastly different; many older buildings have been torn down and replaced, parks have been landscaped with less Victorian flair, and raccoons no longer reside in the County Zoo.