Antique & Vintage Postcards

A mother on the move writes home from the grand Paxton Hotel in Omaha on a warm Saturday evening in 1958 — she arrived around 4 p.m., the bus ride was "very very cool, which was nice," and the temperature outside had climbed to about 92°F. Everything was shuttered for Decoration Day (Memorial Day weekend), and tomorrow she'd push on to Cheyenne. The linen-finish card shows the Paxton's handsome 14-story brick tower rendered in rich earth tones, its vertical neon signage blazing red down the corner facade, period automobiles parked along the busy downtown streetscape — a vivid time capsule of postwar Omaha at its commercial peak. The Paxton, opened in its current form in 1915, was one of the city's premier addresses for decades before its eventual conversion to apartments.