Antique & Vintage Postcards

From somewhere high above the Hollywood Hills, the camera looks straight down onto a circular terraced hilltop crowned by a sprawling white manor house — a bird's-eye revelation of the Bernheimer Home that makes the estate's sheer ambition breathtakingly clear, the concentric rings of manicured terracing dropping away into dense California chaparral and winding canyon roads in every direction. This extraordinary aerial real-photo postcard of the property built by importer and collector Charles is among the rarest views in the Bernheimer Gardens documentation canon: aerial photography of private estates in 1920s Hollywood required a hired pilot and a glass-plate or Graflex camera leaned out over the open cockpit, making such images genuinely uncommon survivals. The handwritten caption reads Bernheimer Home, Hollywood Cal. in confident cursive, and the AZO box back (1918–1930) confirms the RPPC era. The circular driveway and terraced garden layout visible here directly preceded the Yamashiro restaurant configuration still recognizable today, giving this card remarkable continuity with a living landmark.