The sweeping Beaux-Arts barrel vault of Rouen's Nouvelle Gare dominates the skyline of Rue Verte, its grand glazed arch flanked by sculptural figures and crowned by an elaborate clock tower whose face reads just past the morning rush — tram wires criss-cross the forecourt where pedestrians in coats and hats hurry past, the whole scene rendered in the warm sepia tones of a French "carte postale" printed by Cartes "La Cigogne" of Rouen. The Gare de Rouen-Rive-Droite was reconstructed in this monumental form between 1912 and 1928 after the original station proved inadequate for the city's growing rail traffic, and this card captures it in its confident interwar prime, before wartime bombing scarred Normandy. Rouen — the city of Jeanne d'Arc, Flaubert, and Impressionist cathedrals — was one of the most-photographed provincial cities in France, and its railway station cards form a recognized collecting subcategory among French philatelic and deltiology enthusiasts.