Antique & Vintage Postcards

Chrome-era postcard of the San Jeronimo Hilton facing the Caribbean Sea in San Juan, Puerto Rico — the modern high-rise hotel tower and its companion buildings rising above a rocky point where waves crash against the reef, with the turquoise water stretching to the horizon and the Condado hotel district receding along the beach behind. The hotel — inaugurated in 1963 as part of Puerto Rico's postwar tourism boom — went through several names over the decades (San Gerónimo, Helio Isla, Condado Plaza Hilton) and today survives as the Hilton Garden Inn San Juan Condado; it occupies one of the most striking coastal positions in the Caribbean, wedged between the Atlantic and the Condado Lagoon on a site named for the 16th-century Spanish fort nearby. This card was printed by Dexter Press in 1968, the year Puerto Rico received more than a million visitors for the first time.