American Architecture Stamps

In 1998 the post office put out this stamp to acknowledge Art Deco design and chose the Chrysler Building as the American exemplar par excellence.

In 2005 the Chrysler Building also showed up on a stamp--as part of a series commemorating Modern American architecture.

Here's a better look at the stamp.

The Modern Architecture series also had a stamp of the Guggenheim Museum.

But it was not the first time the museum appeared on a stamp. In 1966 this stamp showed Frank Lloyd Wright in front of his Fifth Avenue masterpiece, which opened in 1959, the same year he died.

In 1998 the post office paid tribute to another Art Deco tour de force, the Empire State Building.

Twenty-six years earlier, in 1972, it made its postal debut on this stamp honoring Fiorello LaGuardia.

Also in 1998 came this stamp honoring Robie House, considered the definitive example of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style, the first architectural style of any kind that was uniquely American.

Here's a picture I once took of the house, looking unchanged from the day of its completion in 1910.

In 2008 arrived this stamp of Case Study House No. 8, designed in 1949 by Charles and Ray Eames. 

Here's a picture I once took of the house, which is in Pacific Palisades, Calif.

In 1979 the post office started a series of stamps honoring American architecture. Here's the block from 1979.

And the block from 1980.

As well as the block from 1981, which . . .

. . . featured the Biltmore Estate, another building I once photographed, as well as . . .

. . . the Palace of Fine Arts, which I recently photographed.

In fact, I am fortunate to have been able to spend time at all of the buildings honored in this series, which concluded with this block in 1982. On the upper left is a stamp of Fallingwater, making Frank Lloyd Wright the most honored architect in American philately--Wrightfully so.

Here's a picture of Mies's Crown Hall, which I took last year. It's the upper right stamp above.

In 1981 this stamp paid tribute to James Hoban, the Irish-born architect of the White House.

This stamp honors no architect or architecture in particular but it does (unintentionally) evoke the look of Battery Park City, the 92-acre landfill in lower Manhattan largely made from soil and rock excavated during creation of the World Trade Center. Construction on the first residential building in Battery Park City began in 1980, 13 years after this stamp came out in 1967.