Our recent feature on picture postcards recalled their prevalence in the early decades of the 20th century.
Countless millions were sent as a way of quickly and inexpensively keeping in touch with friends and family in an age long before the arrival of modern communications.
This particular postcard view of Newcastle’s Blackett Street, looking east, dates from a little later in the century.
READ MORE: Tyneside in 1962 - 10 photographs
At some point, the image has been lovingly touched up in colour by a creative individual in the days when photographs were strictly black and white.
The artwork is certainly not sophisticated but it has a certain innocent charm.
We see the old Eldon Grill restaurant, on the right, and the Northern Goldsmith’s clock - not to mention the trolley buses in their traditional banana-yellow livery, a striking sight which surprised many a new visitor to the city over the years.
Today's view remains relatively unchanged on the right of the image - but not on the left.
The recent re-development of Monument Mall, on the left, complements the grandeur of many of the older buildings in the vicinity.
This was not always the case in the past. The concrete monolith that is the Pearl Assurance building – in the centre of the modern image – sitting awkwardly on the corner of New Bridge Street hails from a time in the 1960s and ’70s when many fine old city structures were torn down with reckless abandon.
It replaced the Victorian-built building which was home to a Thomas Cook travel shop, a location which became known as 'Cook's corner' and became a popular Newcastle meeting place for people going shopping or heading for a night on the town.
Returning to the postcard view, further along New Bridge Street, we see the city's old Central Library building, another that was demolished in the '60s to be replaced by a concrete incarnation, which was itself pulled down and replaced with a newer version between 2007 and 2009.
On a historical note, Blackett Street was built between 1824 and 1826 by Richard Grainger as he carried out his ambitious project of totally reshaping Newcastle’s town centre.
Historically it follows the exact line of the north-facing section of the old Town Wall. It had been a muddy lane, but soon became an important route with elegant new properties.
The street was named after a distinguished Novocastrian called John Erasmus Blackett who was Lord Mayor of Newcastle four times, in 1765, 1772, 1780 and 1790.
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