Boxes overflow with bright yellow-green grapefruit in this colorized real-photo postcard documenting the bustling interior of a Florida citrus packing house, where workers — African American laborers among them — sort and crate fruit bound for markets across the country in the winter of 1915. The hand-tinted color gives the grapefruit an almost luminous quality against the rough-hewn wooden crates and corrugated tin walls, making this card as much a vivid piece of folk-industrial art as it is a historical document of Florida's early citrus economy. Postmarked Orlando, Florida on January 5, 1915, the card was sent by "T. Griley" (first name) and countersigned by T. Jones, addressed to a gentleman named Dud at the Ashland Hotel, 7th & Race Streets, Philadelphia, with the warm greeting: "Greetings from the south. Best of luck." Published by H.S.W.R. Croell Co. of Jacksonville, Florida, catalog no. 2201, with a 1-cent Washington green stamp affixed and machine-cancelled.

SKU: PC-02205