Antique & Vintage Postcards

Soaring thirty-eight stories above the corner of Washington Street and Wabash Avenue, the Pittsfield Building dominates this vivid linen-era Chicago skyline card — its white terra-cotta shaft catching the light amid the canyon of the Loop, a green-capped crown visible at the summit and neighbors like the Railway Exchange Building flanking it in warm ochre tones. Built by the Marshall Field Estate and completed in 1927, the Pittsfield was the tallest building in Chicago for a brief moment and remains one of the city's finest examples of early skyscraper Gothic. The card was mailed during the legendary 1933 Chicago World's Fair — "A Century of Progress" — and carries a personal note from a woman named Eldora to her friend Grace at 80 Alexander Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, promising to visit when next on the East Coast.