Antique & Vintage Postcards

Rising thirteen stories of russet brick against a hazy Cincinnati sky, this brilliantly lithographed undivided-back postcard depicts the dramatic corner of Fifth and Walnut Streets in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio — a streetscape charged with the energy of a booming early-20th-century American metropolis, complete with horse-drawn vehicles, electric streetcar tracks gleaming in the cobblestones, and competing signage from neighboring businesses including a jeweler and what appears to be a druggist. The dominant building is almost certainly the Ingalls Building (1903), one of America's first reinforced-concrete skyscrapers and a National Historic Landmark, or its near neighbor — the exact address placing this at the heart of Cincinnati's commercial district during its Gilded Age peak. The card was never mailed and remains in pristine unposted condition, its undivided back (message and address sharing the reverse) dating it firmly to the pre-1907 UDB era, with a stamp box indicating domestic one cent / foreign two cents postage.