Antique & Vintage Postcards

Soaring above lower Manhattan in a blaze of Edwardian ambition, Liberty Tower — then known as the Sinclair Oil Building — commands this hand-colored pre-linen postcard from the earliest golden age of American skyscrapers, likely published within a year or two of the tower's 1909 completion or shortly before, capturing the building's ornate Gothic crown, gargoyle-studded cornice, and the shimmering polychrome windows that made it one of the most photographed towers on Broadway. The dramatic vertical composition, with crowds of tiny pedestrians below and lesser buildings cowering in shadow, perfectly captures the public awe that early steel-frame skyscrapers inspired in an era when New York seemed to be reinventing gravity itself. Published by the Success Postal Card Co. of New York, this is a fine survivor of the divided-back era.