Antique & Vintage Postcards

The sweeping curved rooflines of Adolph's astonishing Hollywood mansion rise against the pale California sky in this crisp real-photo card — a full frontal view of the Bernheimer Japanese Home on Outpost Drive, its broad temple-style façade adorned with hand-carved gilded fittings, bronze lanterns flanking the central staircase, a miniature five-story stone pagoda nestled in the manicured garden at right, and clipped hedges lining a formal lawn that would not look out of place in Kyoto. Built in the early 1910s and expanded through the 1920s using authentic Japanese materials and craftsmen brought from Japan, the Bernheimer estate was at the time of its completion the largest private collection of Japanese art and architecture in the Western Hemisphere, a Hollywood Hills landmark that drew visitors from around the world before the property was later reimagined as the beloved hilltop Yamashiro restaurant. The AZO stamp box on the reverse dates this real-photo postcard to c. 1924–1940; the detail image confirms the caption lettered directly onto the photographic print: Bernheimer Home. Hollywood. Cal.