ATLANTIC SOUTH. Accordion Postcard Set Folder, Souvenir, c. 1940s.
(This postcard folder ships for free inside a rigid Ultra•Pro® toploader to protect it during shipping.)
Starting with a nod to the engineering feat that was The Overseas Highway, which opened as a continuous stretch of U.S. Route 1 for the first time in 1938—a “new highway built over the old Florida East Coast Railway viaducts”—this accordion set of 18 images + vivid front / back illustrations covers Key West and surrounding keys. We see motorists stopped along a stretch with only ocean to either side or “off to sea with no seasickness,” Key West’s first house built in 1825 of cedar, a row of cabanas on Rest Beach, Fort Jefferson on the distant Dry Tortugas, a “Beautiful Palm-Lined Drive,” and many more. The set reminds us: “Key West, where the sun rises and sets in the sea” … Postcard accordion folders became ubiquitous in step with the popularity of motorized tourist travel. The first postcard folders trace to the early 20th-century. But it was in the late 1930s when these fold-out mailers gained brilliant color. From the 1940s through the 1960s, and by way of far-flung post offices the nation over, a flood of these postcard folders found their way to friends and family from tourists taking in the wildly diverse sites and attractions across North America. The sharp commercial-art style illustration indicative of mid-century America, with covers printed on a tough linen paper, makes the souvenir sets of especially the late 1930s-1950s pop over half a century later—full-color photographs having arrived to these postcard folders by the 1960s … [Condition: The condition of this set is one of the more excellent we have seen for its age, still vibrant with no dimming of colors, no creases, rips, marks, and almost no corner wear. The folder was never sent.]
Condition: Used Very Good. Local / Regional Areas. Dimensions: 6.25" wide x 4.25" high
