City in flames with crowds fleeing across a long bridge, reproduction of a 19th-century lithograph

About this postcard

A panoramic night scene shows a riverside city engulfed in fire, with great sheets of flame and exploding shells or gasworks throwing sparks into a dark, smoke-filled sky. A long wooden trestle bridge on stone piers stretches across the wide river, packed end to end with people, animals and wagons fleeing the burning town, while a classical porticoed building and church spires stand out among the rooftops on the far bank. The picture is unlabeled on the front and is a color reproduction of a nineteenth-century disaster print of the kind issued after great American city fires; the composition, with refugees crowding a bridge over a river, follows that well-established print tradition.