Antique & Vintage Postcards

A warm summer morning in 1928 — Bessie dashes off a quick note before breakfast, scrawling that she and her travel companions left home Monday, rolled into Albany by evening, then pressed on north through the Adirondacks, pausing at Schroon Lake before landing at Lake Saranac. The card she grabbed from her bag happened to be this lovely hand-colored linen view of the graceful white lattice footbridge arching over the tranquil lagoon in Albany's Washington Park, rowboaters drifting beneath while promenading ladies in wide-brimmed hats stroll the shaded path at right — a quintessential Edwardian-era park scene captured in the soft pastel palette typical of early American linen printing. Washington Park itself, designed in the tradition of Frederick Law Olmsted, was Albany's crown jewel of civic greenery, and this bridge over the Lake House pond remained one of its most-photographed landmarks well into the mid-20th century.