Vintage Postcard Lot Night Life Dance Cavalier Hotel Lighthouses Ocean Virginia

This postcard collection documents the premier coastal nightlife and maritime landmarks of early 20th-century Tidewater Virginia.

Ocean View Pavilion and Dance Hall, which served as a massive entertainment hub for big bands and beachgoers before a hurricane destroyed it in the mid-20th century. Captures small silhouettes of sharply dressed couples walking the illuminated ocean promenade under a full yellow moon.

Cavalier Hotel, an iconic 1927 luxury resort that hosted ten U.S. presidents and was requisitioned by the U.S. Navy during WWII as a radar training school.

Cape Henry Lighthouses—the original 1792 stone structure (the first federal public works project under the U.S. Constitution), standing alongside its 1881 iron replacement.