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The Great Lakes Region cities and rivers photograph album contains approximately 125 photographs of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Chatham, Minneapolis, and Saginaw from 1916 to 1919.

The Great Lakes Region cities and rivers photograph album contains approximately 125 photographs of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Chatham, Minneapolis, and Saginaw from 1916 to 1919. The images show many of the same people canoeing, skiing, and fishing. Most album pages include handwritten captions with date, location, and names, and some photographs have handwritten notations on the back. Individuals referred to as John, Mother, Wahnita, and Aunt Anna appear most frequently. Also included are images of a Peace Day and Armistice Day parade in 1918 and a Standard Oil fire in July, 1919. A few images show scenes from the Panama Canal Zone.

The album is 21.75 x 13.5 cm with dark brown cloth covers.

The Penrod/Hiawatha Company collection is mainly comprised of postcards, although some supplemental photographic items directed toward tourists is also included. The postcards, numbering more than 5,000, primarily are of the Michigan landscape and its towns and cities, covering every region of the state. Typical postcard themes dominate, particularly natural scenery, outdoor recreation, and shopping districts. The postcards date from the 1950s through the opening decades of the twenty-first century, although very few display copyright dates. The collection is divided into the following series.

1. Non-Postcard Items (calendars, brochures, booklets): Box 1
2. Non-Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards: Box 2
3. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, 1970s-1990s: Boxes 2-5
4. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, mid- to late 1990s: Boxes 5-6
5. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, late 1990s-2000): Boxes 6-7
6. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, 2001-2004: Box 8
7. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, 2005-2014: Box 9
8. Oversize and miscellaneous: Box 10

As batches of postcards are received every years, it was decided to arrange the items in blocks of time according to the date of their accession. Thus for the researcher interested in a specific city, it will be necessary to examine the listing for each of the series.