"City" but no city or state in address.

[youpiao]

I have never seen this before (maybe because I've never paid attention to postal history), then, tonight, I ran across three covers addressed like these two. 





Instead of a city and state, there is simply the word, "City," in the address.

My guess is that this was an acceptable practice for letters that were being delivered within the same city as the post office where it was dropped off. Is that correct? Was this an accepted practice in cities nationwide?

Tedski

[youpiao]

Uh oh... I feel myself falling down the rabbit hole of postal history. Another thing just caught my eye: what does the "2" in the upper CDS designate?

[mourningdoves]

I've seen a few of those addresses. You're right: "City" is shorthand for "same city as in the return address". My US covers are not in an order that I can search, but my general recollection is that the most recent ones I've seen are no later than the early 1950s, and that the usage had been discouraged for a while before then. It saved time (especially before preprinted address labels were affordable) and money (for both individuals and businesses for whom pens and ink cartridges were a measurable expense) but caused delays and confusion if the letter got mis-sorted or happened to be mailed in a suburb, not in the city itself - which would have been more of a problem during the suburban migration after the end of WWII.

The "2" looks like a routing code of some sort, but I've rarely seen them tied to a CDS as that one appears to be, so I have to think it's an early usage that I don't know. Could it be a very early example of presorted mail? I really don't know.

[dgdecker]

I have seen a few examples of this on covers from Toronto and Montreal. If my memory serves me well, I think that “ local” mail was at a lower rate. I do not own any of these covers, so I may be wrong in that.

[kacyds]

The number that is in the duplex cancel is for that individual mail clerk. Each clerk had his own duplex canceler, so if there was a problem with a cancel, e.g. broken, wrong date, upside down date, etc., they knew were to go, and who, to find that duplex canceler.

You have to remember, 100+ years ago, most cities only had one post office, so it was easy to track who cancelled each piece of mail.

Hope this helps.