Bathed in rich lithographic color that turns the Bulfinch-designed State House's brick into warm amber and its famous dome into gleaming gold, this early Boston souvenir card shows Beacon Hill's most commanding landmark as Edwardian tourists would have wished to remember it — flanked by the equestrian statue of Joseph Hooker, American flags snapping overhead, and the newly added Ames wing stretching away to the right along Beacon Street. The Massachusetts state seal in a decorative cartouche occupies the upper right corner, a fashionable embellishment on state-capitol cards of this era. The reverse carries the undivided-back format with its distinctive American eagle vignette and the postal rate box listing 1¢ domestic / 2¢ foreign — the exact rate structure in force from 1898 through mid-1907, tightly bracketing this card's production date. Unused and clean, it represents the peak of the American "golden age" postcard craze that saw hundreds of millions of cards pass through the U.S. mails each year.