Gleaming white verandas stretch across three generous stories of the Tivoli Hotel in Panama — once the grandest accommodation in all of Central America, built by the U.S. government in 1906 to house dignitaries, engineers, and visitors overseeing the great Panama Canal construction. In this hand-colored early postcard, the hotel's colonial-tropical architecture commands a wide lawn where two small figures — a child in white and a stooped figure nearby — give human scale to the imposing structure. The Tivoli was legendary: Teddy Roosevelt stayed there on his 1906 canal inspection, the first sitting U.S. president to travel abroad while in office. Published by I.L. Maduro Jr. from Cathedral Plaza in Panama City, this card traveled to Miss Margarett in Baltimore, Maryland, bearing a message that is quietly charming in its practicality — the sender explains having to cut the card to make it fit an envelope because it was "the only view I could find" of the best hotel, promising a letter to follow in a few days.