Antique & Vintage Postcards

Step into the roaring commercial heart of early Los Angeles: Seventh Street stretches westward from Spring Street in a torrent of electric streetcars, horse-drawn wagons, early automobiles, and crowds of pedestrians dressed in Edwardian finery — a city visibly straining at the seams of its own ambition. The hand-colored photographic image crackles with period energy; trolley tracks gleam down the center lane while multi-story terra-cotta commercial blocks press in on both sides, their ground-floor awnings alive with signage. Published by the celebrated Edward H. Mitchell of San Francisco — one of California's premier early postcard publishers — this card documents downtown L.A. at a pivotal moment, roughly 1910–1915, when the city's population had just surpassed 300,000 and Spring Street was being dubbed "the Wall Street of the West." The penciled "3–" on the reverse suggests an old dealer price notation, and the card shows honest age-toning consistent with its century-plus of existence.