Title
1960s Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Hotel Merlin Modernist Landmark Building Postcard
Front
Colour photographic view of the Hotel Merlin at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, seen from below and to one side, showing the full height of the newly completed building.
The hotel is a large modernist block of some eleven storeys, its two long wings meeting at an obtuse angle at the centre of the view. Both wings are faced in a regular exposed concrete grid frame, painted pale grey and white, each bay containing a recessed window with a horizontal spandrel panel below and a projecting sill, giving a strongly articulated chequered appearance across the whole elevation. Window-mounted air-conditioning units project at intervals. Vertical service and stair towers rise at the ends and at the angle, the central one faced with a screen of tall slender concrete fins running the full height.
At the base a single-storey podium runs along the front, roofed with a distinctive range of shallow barrel vaults in white concrete, forming a scalloped canopy over the ground floor. A projecting entrance canopy and low wing extend at the right, carrying the hotel’s name sign. Rough open ground with grass and scrub occupies the foreground, and low green hills are visible in the distance beneath a blue sky with light cloud.
Back
Divided-back colour postcard, printed text in blue.
Printed at the upper centre: “KL 266”
Printed at the upper left:
“HOTEL MERLIN
Kuala Lumpur
One of the most famous hotels in the Federal capital, this newly built structure adds to the list of prominent landmarks of Kuala Lumpur.”
Printed in the right-hand panel: “POST CARD” and beneath it “ADDRESS”
Within a ruled box at the upper right: “PLACE STAMP HERE”
Printed at the lower centre:
“PRINTED IN U.S.A.
Pub. by:-
A.S.M.K. & Co.
Singapore-6”
Printed at the lower left: “C-21121”
No stamp, postmark or handwriting is present; the card is unused.
Estimated Era
Circa 1965 to 1970. The Hotel Merlin on Jalan Sultan Ismail was among the first of the large international-standard hotels built in Kuala Lumpur during the boom that followed the formation of Malaysia in 1963, and the printed caption describes it as “newly built”, placing the photograph within a year or two of its opening in the middle 1960s; the raw untended ground in the foreground confirms that the surroundings were still unfinished. The card was published by A.S.M.K. & Co. of Singapore and printed in the United States, a common arrangement for Southeast Asian view cards of the period, and the Singapore postal district number “Singapore-6” belongs to the system in use before the introduction of full postal codes. The card is unposted, so no postmark confirms a year of use.
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