Evocative, Never Opened 1929 Letter to R.F Lovelee, Seneca Hotel, Rochester antique French skittles with a mix of banded

with a mix of banded patterns at the center

both from auctions—one of this size sold at Skinner in 2016 for $246

Or treat it as a sculpture

and making this seem all the more like a specific portrait of a specific place at a specific time

and a couple of gray scraps

Evocative, Never Opened 1929 Letter to R.F Lovelee, Seneca Hotel, Rochester antique French skittles with a mix of bandedThis envelope alone feels like a novel to me and what better name for a heroine (in my mind the addressee is a young woman) than R. F. Lovelee? This R. F Lovelee presumably was staying at the Seneca Hotel, built in 1847 in the French Renaissance manner, and by the 1920s Rochester's largest hotel, with over 500 rooms. But if this letter, mailed two months before the stock market crash that would launch the Great Depression, ever reached her, it appears