Lost and Found is a deeply researched visual journey through Boston’s vanished landscapes, forgotten neighborhoods, and the everyday lives captured on vintage postcards. Kathy Alpert, whose collection is now housed at the Library Company of Philadelphia, has spent decades uncovering the stories hidden in ephemera.
From the demolished West End to the immigrant enclaves that shaped the city’s character, this book reveals how postcards—often dismissed as trivial—served as chronicles of social change, urban renewal, and collective memory.
Featuring over 200 postcards from the Alpert Collection, many reproduced in full color for the first time, Lost and Found offers scholars, collectors, and general readers a new lens on American history.
The book includes historical context, archival research, and personal reflections on the act of collecting itself—what it means to preserve what others discard.
Kathy Alpert is a postcard scholar, collector, designer, and speaker. Her collection of women’s history postcards and ephemera was acquired by the Library Company of Philadelphia, one of the nation’s foremost independent research libraries.
She has been featured in Martha Stewart Living, The Boston Globe, and numerous museum exhibitions. Kathy speaks regularly on the history and cultural significance of postcards.
Book Launch Celebration
May 23, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
415 Summer Street, Room 151B, Level 1, Boston’s Seaport
Join Kathy for postcard history and book signing fun.
“A masterful work of visual history. Alpert brings vanished Boston back to life through meticulously researched postcard narratives.”
— The Boston Globe
“Essential reading for anyone interested in American urban history, ephemera studies, or the power of vernacular archives.”
— Library Company of Philadelphia
“Kathy Alpert has given us a gift: the voices and images of a city we thought we’d lost.”
— West End Museum
From the collector whose archive is housed at the Library Company of Philadelphia
