In this beautifully preserved early-era tinted postcard, the Eiffel Tower soars above the Seine in a view that could only date from the tower's earliest decades — two side-wheel steamers crowd the river foreground, their smokestacks and passenger decks evoking the bustling Bateaux Parisiens service that ferried Parisians and tourists alike along the river at the turn of the twentieth century. The delicate blue-grey sky wash and sepia photographic base mark this as a classic pre-divided-back French carte postale, printed when the tower — still controversial among Parisians — was barely a teenager. The reverse is entirely blank, unused, and crisp, a time capsule of Parisian modernity at the dawn of a new century.