Dripping with intricate white carpenter's lace against salmon-red board-and-batten siding, this iconic "Gingerbread Cottage" in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard looks almost too fanciful to be real — a Victorian confection born from the Methodist camp-meeting tents that once filled this very ground in the 1830s. The elaborately sawn bargeboard trim, Gothic pointed arches over the porch, and ornamental balcony railing are hallmarks of the Carpenter Gothic style that transformed Cottage City (as Oak Bluffs was then known) into one of America's most architecturally distinctive communities. Rocking chairs on the porch invite leisurely summer afternoons; a wicker chair sits at the far right as if awaiting a returning vacationer named perhaps Sarah or Edith. Published by D.C. Thompson of Vineyard Haven, with color photography by DeWolf Thompson, this Plastichrome card by Colourpicture Publishers of Boston captures the community at the height of mid-century tourism interest in the Vineyard.