This divided linen picture postcard shows the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego after it expanded the illuminated "El Cortez Hotel" sign in 1951, along with the bar of the Sky Room. Built on the site of the U.S. Grant, Jr. home on Ash Street, the hotel was the tallest building (at 310 feet) in San Diego from its opening in 1927 until 1963. The original photographs for these chromolithographs must have been taken after the sign expansion in 1951 but before the postcard manufacturer, E. C. Kropp Co., was sold to L. L. Cook in 1956. The Art Deco Sky Room, shown at the bottom, was added in 1940, with glass walls completely around the dining room, offering a view of San Diego. As identification by either publisher or maker, the card offers two numbers: the "76" on the front after the epigraph, and the number "8843" on the back, near the stamp box identifying the card as made by "ECK Co.," the E. C. Kropp Co. The approximate date is the 1950s.
