1914 WWI Philadelphia Money Order Receipt Grodno Russia Red War Stamp Train Map For Sale

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Approximate size in inches - 9 x 5.75
This is an original printed and handwritten international banking document from the early months of the World War I era in the United States. Formally designated as a Foreign Remittance Money Order Voucher, this document was issued by M. Rosenbaum Foreign Exchange Bank, operating out of 603 S. 3rd Street in the historic immigrant commercial district of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The document dates precisely to December 13, 1914, recording a transaction where an Eastern European immigrant named P. Lipovich deposited a sum of Sixteen Dollars to be securely forwarded overseas to Marya M. Kosowa, located in Grodno Gub. (Grodno Governorate, a historic territory of the Russian Empire on the Eastern Front).The front face of the document features an exquisite, high-contrast blue ink letterpress frame layout showcasing dense industrial transit graphics. The upper left corner displays a magnificent circular vignette illustrating a traditional multi-mast sailing ship navigating open ocean swells, situated directly above a detailed rendering of a powerful American steam locomotive train charging down the railroad tracks past telegraph lines. The handwritten ledger blocks track the exchange rate equivalent of thirty rubles. The upper right quadrant is struck with a sharp black ink agent processing handstamp from the Rosenbaum office. Because the bank had not yet updated its printed border templates to reflect the global conflict, the teller applied a massive, highly prominent diagonal red ink handstamp directly across the center text fields reading: Party Who Placed This Money Order Agrees That Delivery Is Subject To Delay On Account Of War.The reverse side consists of a plain paper backing that remains completely unwritten and clean. It preserves a highly striking, natural mirroring bleed-through silhouette of both the dark fluid ink cursive strokes and the red manual wartime handstamp from the front face, showing off the lightweight paper stock utilized by early twentieth-century financial printing houses.The physical condition of this 1914 document is very good, surviving as a clean and complete historical record. The paper exhibits a natural uniform cream toning, standard quadrant storage cross-folding creases, and minor localized storage smudging along the folds, but remains completely free of modern tape alterations, heavy tearing, or ink defacement obscuring any of the text. This item serves as a wonderful, museum-quality physical record of early wartime immigrant finance, Gilded Age locomotive illustration, and American-Russian banking history at the onset of World War I.