Antique & Vintage Postcards

A proud red-brick Bradenton High School anchors the upper-right panel of this vibrant linen multiview card, surrounded by six lush vignettes of Florida's agricultural bounty — clusters of golden grapefruit, spiky pineapples, fat bunches of bananas, and smiling orange-grove visitors in 1920s–30s resort attire — painting an irresistible picture of the Sunshine State promise that lured thousands of new residents during the Florida land boom of the era. Bradenton, seat of Manatee County and situated on the south bank of the Manatee River, was a booming citrus and tourist centre when E. C. Kropp of Milwaukee produced this card; the back text boasts of the Tamiami Trail crossing the Green Bridge — "one of the finest concrete bridges in the State" — connecting Palmetto and Bradenton. The linen stock, vivid colour saturation, and Kropp's "Made in U.S.A." imprint date this squarely to the classic American linen era of the 1930s–early 1940s.