Antique & Vintage Postcards

Bathed in the warm golden haze that only a Curt Teich linen can conjure, the American Museum of Natural History anchors the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West in all its Romanesque Revival grandeur — red-tiled turrets, rusticated stone, and the gleaming new Roosevelt Memorial Hall wing just visible at the right edge, while period automobiles including a jaunty red roadster dot the curving drive below. Founded in 1869, the AMNH was by the 1930s already one of the most visited institutions in the world, and postcards like this one — produced under Curt Teich's proprietary "C.T. Art-Colortone" process and distributed by Frank E. Cooper of 258 Broadway, New York — were sold by the thousands in the museum's gift shop and nearby newsstands. The back copy notes exhibits of dinosaur skeletons, Mexican and Peruvian material, gems, jades, ivories, and amber, a snapshot of the collections before major mid-century reorganizations. The stamp box reads "Place One Cent Stamp Here," firmly dating the card to the pre-1952 one-cent domestic postcard rate era.