Lot #742: Vintage 1908 Carthage, Missiouri, USA Postcard - "High School, Carthage, Missiouri". - USA 1¢ Green "Benjamin Franklin" Stamp

One Vintage 1908 Carthage, Missouri USA Postcard, used, showing a view of a handsome brick "High School, Carthage, Missouri". This coloured postcard has no publisher given, but has a divided back and indicates "Made in Germany". Includes One Green USA One-Cent "Benjamin Franklin" Stamp. Postmarked September 1908 at Carthage, Missouri, USA. Cryptic pencil message in uneven hand: "If you are through with skin (?), send it here. Ogden". Addressed to "Mr. David Irick, Streator, Illinois" Carthage, Missouri, was known as "The Pearl City" because of its famous grey marble (Carthage Marble) quarries, but this card focuses on the "handsome brick" architecture of the local high school. In 1908, a brick high school was a major symbol of a town’s maturity and investment in the future. The design likely featured the arched windows and structured symmetry seen in many "pre-war" educational buildings across North America. Even for a local school in a mid-sized Missouri town, the best printing was outsourced to Germany ("Made in Germany"). The "richly coloured" look you see is the result of German chromolithography, which was the gold standard until the onset of World War I. Streator, Illinois, was a major glass-manufacturing and coal-mining hub at the time. The mail route from Carthage to Streator would have been a direct shot through the heart of the Midwestern rail network. Dimensions: 9 mm x 14 mm Pickup category timeslot {A}