Antique & Vintage Postcards

Mailed from Paris in the summer of 1906 and received in West Philadelphia just days later, this real-photo-style postcard of the East Terrace, Windsor Castle carries all the romance of an Edwardian traveler pausing to send a greeting across the Atlantic. The front shows a crisp black-and-white photographic view of Windsor Castle's formal East Terrace garden — symmetrical parterres, classical statuary on pedestals, a central fountain, and the castle's medieval battlements rising above — a composition that was enormously popular in the Edwardian postcard boom. On the front, in pencil, someone has written "Regards a Bh" (or similar initials). The reverse, printed for inland US postage use, bears a French 10-centime stamp (rose-red Semeuse type), a Paris dispatch cancel dated July 1906, and two Philadelphia arrival cancels: a Philadelphia PA Jul 21 5-AM 06 machine cancel and a West Philadelphia "Received" handstamp. It was addressed to Miss Mona at 510 No. 39th St., Phila., Pa., U.S.A. — a charming cross-Atlantic social connection preserved for over a century.