A sea of gleaming two-tone 1950s automobiles fills the lot of the brand-new Riviera Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip — its nine-story tower rising boldly against the Nevada sky as the marquee announces Polly Bergen and Jack Carter headlining the showroom, a snapshot of the Strip's glamorous adolescence when Rat Pack cool and neon spectacle were just getting started. Opened in 1955 as the first high-rise hotel on the Strip, the Riviera was a symbol of Vegas ambition, and this Publichrôme chrome card captures it in its prime — parking lot packed, signage blazing, the desert itself nowhere in sight. On the back, a writer — never mailing the card — gushes in pencil: "I've got to go back to Las Vegas, it was so pretty, there's no speed limit in Nevada. The signs the same Mel must cost millions," a breathless tourist reaction that perfectly encapsulates mid-century America's love affair with Las Vegas.