Antique & Vintage Postcards

A sun-drenched Florida citrus grove bursts to life in this early promotional postcard — a family of pickers, including two small children in wide-brimmed hats and white pinafores, works between rows of orange-laden trees while a horse-drawn wagon waits to receive the harvest, wooden crates stenciled with a shipper's mark stacked at their feet. Issued by Bryant & Greenwood of the Republic Building, Chicago, this is not a conventional tourist souvenir but a land-sales advertisement: the reverse pitches a tract in Palm Beach County, Florida at $250 payable at $10 per month, promising good roads, drainage, proximity to the railroad on the east coast, and a free town lot on Lake Worth thrown in with each small tract. The pastoral imagery was carefully chosen to romanticize Florida farming life for Midwestern buyers who had never seen a citrus grove, part of the great Florida land-promotion wave that preceded the 1920s boom by a full decade. The stamp box specifies domestic one cent / foreign two cents, firmly dating the card to the pre-1917 postal era.