Antique & Vintage Postcards

Postmarked February 25, 1926 — just months before a catastrophic hurricane would end the Florida land boom — this white-border-era card shows Miami's imposing Scottish Rite Temple in all its Neoclassical-Egypto-Masonic splendor, its massive colonnaded façade, elaborate roofline sculptures, and towering arched windows framed by royal palms against a pastel Florida sky. The card was sent by an unidentified traveler (signing only with initials) to Agnes in Louisville, Kentucky, her address on Galt Avenue written in a confident period cursive. The Scottish Rite Temple was (and remains) a landmark of Miami's early civic architecture, built as a center of Freemasonry in South Florida during the booming 1920s. This card carries a 2-cent Washington stamp and a crisp Miami FLA machine cancel — a fully posted, traveled artifact from the precise year the Florida boom peaked and collapsed, making it a poignant historical time capsule.