Burnished in warm sunset hues, this Edwardian-era view of the Kolk — a historic inner-harbor canal district in Rotterdam — shows timber rafts floating in the foreground, a graceful iron swing-bridge arching in the middle distance, and the soaring tower of the Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk anchoring the skyline, all against a vivid orange and blue sky characteristic of the hand-colored lithographic postcards of the period. Rotterdam's Kolk was a bustling commercial waterway at the heart of Europe's greatest port city; today the Laurenskerk tower is nearly all that survived the devastating German bombing of May 1940. The card was dispatched from The Hague ('s-Gravenhage) on 24 September 1911 by a traveler writing to Mary in Madison, Wisconsin, breathlessly describing a morning at the market — "fish market, rye market, pig market — clogs, with head dress" — and boarding a boat that evening for The Hague. Published by the Swiss firm Edition H. Guggenheim & Co. of Zürich, whose finely printed cards are prized by deltiology collectors.

SKU: PC-02120