Antique & Vintage Postcards

Turrets and wraparound porches emerge from a canopy of mature elms in this dreamy chromolithograph of the Byron Weston Homestead in Dalton, Massachusetts — the Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion of a man whose name graced the paper that authenticated American currency and legal documents for generations. Byron Weston (1832–1902) founded the Byron Weston Company in 1863, making Dalton — already home to Crane & Co. — one of the most important specialty paper-manufacturing towns in America; his mill produced banknote, bond, and diploma papers of legendary quality. The estate itself reflects the prosperity of a Gilded Age paper baron: a multi-gabled shingled pile with a corner turret, octagonal tower, and broad covered porch nestled in the gentle Berkshire hills. Published by Frank B. Howard of Dalton, this small-town card carries the undivided-style "POST CARD" back with 1-cent domestic / 2-cent foreign stamp box — the standard divided-back format that places it squarely in the 1907–1915 window. For collectors of industrial history, Berkshire County, or Victorian architecture, this card offers an unusually specific window into a family whose legacy literally held the paper of American civic life together.