Antique & Vintage Postcards

Dappled summer light filters through a cathedral of mature elms arching over North Water Street in Edgartown, Massachusetts — one of Martha's Vineyard's most storied thoroughfares, lined with Federal-style captains' houses built on 19th-century whaling wealth. This black-and-white real-photo-style halftone card, published by the Edgartown Drug Co. and printed by the Albertype Co. of Brooklyn, captures the street in its quiet mid-century repose: a single period automobile is barely visible in the middle distance, parked in front of white clapboard homes behind picket fences. The Albertype Company, active from the 1890s through the late 1950s, was renowned for its collotype printing process, producing some of the sharpest, most tonally rich cards of the era. The back is clean and unused, with no postmark or message.