Antique & Vintage Postcards

Two open touring cars — their brass fittings catching the golden afternoon light — idle before the handsome Mission Revival depot of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in Southbridge, Massachusetts, while a locomotive steams patiently on the right-hand track and fashionably dressed passengers cross the forecourt. This linen-era card captures the busy intersection of automobile and rail travel that defined American small-town life in the early 1920s, when the NYNH&H was one of New England's dominant carriers and Southbridge — then a prosperous optical-manufacturing center — warranted a purpose-built station of genuine architectural ambition. The card was never mailed, preserving its crisp colors and clean back, and was published by Morris Berman of New Haven, Connecticut, whose "M|B Quality Service" imprint graced countless southern New England views.