Wish You Were Here
Professor’s postcard collection puts stamp on local history
Decades ago, Route 50 in Fairfax was lined with motels with glitzy names—the Chilla Villa, the Lord Fairfax Motel, Sunset Grove Cottages, the Hy-Way Motel. These retro, colorful artifacts may have been torn down years ago to make way for car dealerships and restaurants, but their memory lives on in the University Libraries thanks to a couple of historians eager to preserve Fairfax City’s history.
Mason history professor Randolph Lytton and his wife, Ellen, are fascinated with Northern Virginia’s past. They recently donated a collection of more than 200 postcards of places in Fairfax during the late 19th and 20th centuries to the libraries’ Special Collections and Archives. With the help of the Washington Research Library Consortium, the images were placed online (www.aladin.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/lytton/lytton.shtml) in a searchable database.
Many of the postcards are from the early 20th century, a time often referred to as the golden age of postcards. From motels to furniture stores to hospitals to the Fairfax Courthouse, each postcard offers a glimpse of history that might otherwise have been lost.
“The postcards are snapshots of different periods of the city’s history. They are records of public buildings and private houses, many of which have been altered or torn down. Through these images, we can trace the physical changes that Fairfax has gone through over time,” says Lytton.
The images on the postcards are interesting, but perhaps what is more intriguing are the hand-written notes found on some of the cards. These messages tell a bit about the historical context in which the note was written or reveal a moment in a person’s life. A Fairfax High School postcard from 1942 carries the message “Dear Mrs. McCue, Hope you are well. My cousin and I had a good time at a hymn sing last Sunday night. I am still hoping to visit you in February. Love, Elissa.”
Lytton and his wife, a librarian who also has history degrees, have set up an endowment with Special Collections and Archives for the purpose of studying Fairfax history. The Randolph and Ellen Lytton Special Collections Endowment for the Libraries will be used to support the postcard collection, as well as other items of Fairfax history that the couple has collected over the years. They will donate these items to the library in increments. The addition of the collection is particularly fitting this year, which marks the City of Fairfax’s 200th birthday.
“Ellen and I thought that donating the collection was a nice way to contribute to the bicentennial by sharing these images with the community,” Lytton says. “I think that George Mason University could become a real center for studying Fairfax history. The libraries are well-equipped to catalog and preserve these materials and make them available to a wider audience.”
Lytton’s interest in Northern Virginia history is not limited to his collecting. He also has been involved with the city’s historic board for many years, serving as its vice president and president. He played an integral role in the 1992 opening of the Fairfax Museum and Visitor Center, and helped with the restoration of several historic buildings in the city, including the 1812/1824 Ratcliff–Allison House.
As for his favorite piece in the collection, Lytton has a hard time choosing. “The most interesting item is the next thing I find,” he says. “Each one is a surprise, and that is what keeps me looking and collecting.
