Antique & Vintage Postcards

A glamorous ice skater in a crimson tutu leaps center-stage at the Boulevard Room of the Stevens Hotel in Chicago — one of the most celebrated nightclub spectacles of mid-century America, where big-band orchestras serenaded diners while skating stars performed on the largest hotel ice rink in the country. The Stevens, opened in 1927 at Michigan Avenue and Seventh Street, was the world's largest hotel at the time of its construction and became a Hilton property in 1945; its Boulevard Room ice shows were a signature attraction drawing celebrities and society figures throughout the 1940s and '50s. This unused advertising postcard captures the room's Art Deco grandeur — draped teal curtains, classical busts on pedestals, a grand piano flanking the conductor — in rich chromolithographic color, a perfect artifact of Chicago's golden age of luxury entertainment.