Antique & Vintage Postcards

Cool, monumental, and unmistakably of its era, this chrome card documents the entrance portico of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park — one of the great architectural achievements of 20th-century Mexico, inaugurated by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz on September 17, 1964. Architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez's vision unfolds here in the card's foreground: a vast basalt-paved esplanade lined with rectangular planter benches of volcanic tezontle stone, flowering bougainvillea punctuating the geometry, and the museum's famous cantilevered "umbrella" pavilion and its colossal bronze eagle medallion visible above the glass entrance facade. A handful of small figures near the entrance give human scale to the immensity. Published by Foto Fisa (the "F" medallion publisher) — Mexico City's premier postcard house of the 1960s–1980s — this is an early production card, likely from the museum's inaugural year or shortly after. Printed in Mexico. Never mailed; pencil price 25¢.