Latest Granton history book takes reader on visual journey across village

By Cheyenne Thomas Over the past decade, Jay Parker has been on a quest to catalog as much history about the village of Granton as he can. What started out as a project to update Granton’s history book has now grown, with the release of a fourth book which invites readers to quite literally take a trip down memory lane to see the village of Granton in its entirety.

Called “Granton: A Snapshot 2009,” Parker’s latest book is made up entirely of photographs, each one piecing together a complete image of what the village looked like more than a decade ago. Going street by street, this visual journal provides readers a unique look at Granton that will be an invaluable resource for future historians and generations.

The book was completed at the beginning of November. Parker said the inspiration came from looking at old postcards of various sites in Granton that traveling photographers took during Granton’s early days as a village. While those old postcards were informative, he noticed that those photographs only ever showed a certain part of Granton, never revealing what the village looked like beyond a few blocks.

“Before I had the idea of a book on Granton, I was a collector of memorabilia from the village of Granton,” he said. “And I remember going through old postcards and photographs of the village and realizing that every professional photographer that came into the village to take pictures only ever did them a certain way. They would do a two-block section of Maple Street, which is the business district, or the two blocks of Main Street as community photographs they would put on postcards. They had photos of the grade school, high school, and individual businesses. Those were made into postcards to be sold at the local business. There were a way for people to send messages to their family and friends of where they were at a given moment. The rest of the village went undocumented. I have found a few photos of residences in the past that were in private collections from residents, but there is no photo of what Granton looks like as a village.”

Realizing that, Parker decided to take up the task of documenting the parts of Granton that had previously been left undocumented. In early 2009, Parker went around the entire village, taking photographs street by street from multiple angles, giving people a view of each street and each house on the street. The west side of the village was photographed on a day in January of 2009 while the east side of the village was photographed in April of 2009.

“I started at the end of Maple Street with both the photography and the book,” he said. “I would first shoot a photo and then walk down the street until I reached the point where the two photos would slightly overlap and take another photo. I would take those photos all the way down the street. Then I would turn around and go back up the street and take a photo of the same side but from the opposite angle because sometimes a building looks different being viewed from another side. Then I would go to the opposite side of the street and do the same thing.”

In total, Parker said there are approximately 350 photos in the book. The book itself is organized by street, with a map index provided at the start of the book to help readers orient themselves in the village. That way, a person looking at the village both now and in future years will have no doubt on where something once stood.

“When I have gone back on looking at old history, there would be times that I would come across information of a new family moving into town. There would be articles that would say, ‘They moved into so-and-so’s old house.’ The people living in the village at the time knew whose house they were talking about. But 100 years later, all that context is lost. We don’t know where these people lived. But I would have wanted to know that. I would have loved to be able to go back and see what those residential areas looked like, what could have been there that isn’t there anymore. With those old photographs too, you can see what was in people’s yards. The toys of kids, a buggy or a car — those all show you some part of their everyday life of the time. I hope someone looking at this book 30 or 70 years from now will be able to cherish and appreciate this work. If we don’t record it now, it will all be lost.”

To further help with documenting the history of the village, Parker said each page has captions that he wrote describing the images as they were in 2009. As a time piece, he said it was important to write the book as if he was still in that time period rather than writing the book more than a decade later.

“I wrote the captions as how I would have written them in 2009,” he said. “It took me 15 years to do this, but I wrote this as if I was writing it then. For example, back then the hardware store was called Webster’s Hardware. That would be how I describe it in the book, with no references to how it changed later on. It’s recorded how the village was at that time.”

Given how niche the topic is, Parker said he is only printing the book in small quantities, which can be obtained by contacting Parker directly. He also donated a copy of the book to the Granton Community Library for anyone who is interested in viewing the contents.

With his latest book completed, Parker said he is in the process of completing another work which also will showcase Granton’s photographic history. With photos of Granton across many different time periods, he said the photos will help to show another side of Granton’s history, providing additional context and images to go with important figures in the village’s history.

“I’m working on another book that will include photographs of the village at different points that were not included in my original book,” he said. “I don’t expect it to be published this year, as I am still trying to find some photos of older members of the community so people will actually have faces to go with the names of people they have heard about for so long.”

There are two photographs in particular that Parker said he is looking for and is hoping someone has stored away in a private collection somewhere. The first is a photograph of a panel truck used by Spaete’s Locker during the 1950-60s. The truck itself has an image of a ring of bologna dancing with a slab of bacon and was used as a part of their float in the Fall Festival parade during that time. The second photo is of the intersection of Romadka Avenue and Tree Road, where residents of the area said there once was a tree growing in the center of the road that people had to drive around.

“People have asked me about those photos and if they would be included, but I have not found a photo of them,” he said. “I would love to find a photo of that.”

To contact Jay Parker to either purchase a copy of “Granton: A Snapshot 2009” or to provide information on photos he is searching for, call 763-789-4253 or email at jpgranton@icloud.com.

CHEYENNE THOMAS/STAFF PHOTO