Antique & Vintage Postcards

Flossie's postcard from the eighth floor of the Pacific Holiday Hotel on Koa Avenue in the heart of Waikiki captures mid-century Hawaii at its most aspirational — a crisp chrome-era photograph of the modernist tower with its decorative concrete-block screens, golden façade, and swaying palms evokes the jet-age glamour of early 1960s Honolulu, when $60 a week for a near-penthouse double room felt like the height of luxury. Flossie writes to Cele in Bloomfield, New Jersey, with wit and warmth: the lobby reminds her of "a Polynesian Healy's," but her view is divine. Sent via airmail with an 8¢ U.S. Air Mail stamp, the card is a delightful snapshot of the Pacific Holiday Hotel, a now-vanished Waikiki landmark at 2424 Koa Avenue.