Hill Top House, Harpers Ferry, WV. Sepia oversized post card. Circa 1900

Description

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia:
Oversized Sepia Albertype Postcard with Publisher's Illustrated Envelope.
Brooklyn, N.Y. : Albertype Co. ; Harper's Ferry, W. Va. : Walter E. Dittmeyer, c.1900s.  Postcard: Approx. 5 7/8 x 7¾ inches. Not postally used with illustrated envelope. Postcards Near Fine.
Circa the 1900s, Large format Albertype postcard-printed by a proprietary photomechanical process by the Albertype Co. of Brooklyn-depicting View of Hill Top House.
Publisher Walter E. Dittmeyer (1878-1937) was also a physician/pharmacist in Harpers Ferry. He is noted for publishing an illustrated view book of Harpers Ferry, Souvenir of Harper's Ferry, W. Va. (1906), and later for allowing a controversial "faithful-slave" monument to be erected on the sidewalk of his property, just opposite the John Brown Fort obelisk commemorating the radical abolitionist and martyr John Brown (1800-1859).¹
The accompanying publisher's envelope plays on the theme of these cards' large format by depicting a giraffe delivering a card to a woman high up in a tower window.