The past few days I've had fun --with the aid of Luis Alvarez, who deserves most of the credit-- arranging my Agua Caliente postcards to show the quadrangle courtyard of the hotel. The hotel was one of many buildings of the magnificent resort. (At the bottom of this post, I give a short history and description of the resort.)

If you click this link to my web page, you will see how I numbered, mapped and described a dozen postcards to show the three hotel wings from the courtyard:
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/AguaCalienteMorePics.htm
It's what you would see if you were standing at the main hotel wing looking out at the courtyard, seeing the other three hotel wings.

some of the dozen postcards keyed to the numbers in the map above:

#2

#6

#7

#10

short history and description of the resort
Agua Caliente, Tijuana, Mexico (a stone's throw from the California border and San Diego, and an hour's plane ride from Los Angeles) was heralded as the Monte Carlo and Deauville of the Western Hemisphere. It was the biggest, most lavish resort of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. It had the world's richest horse races and golf tournaments. "The Agua Caliente resort cost approximately $10,000,000, an enormous sum of money for that period. The first stage of the project comprised a 500 room hotel, casino, health spa, and café, inaugurated on June 23, 1928. The second stage consisted of an "olympic size" swimming pool, health clinics, 18 hole golf course, putting course, horse racing and greyhound race tracks, gardens and tropical aviary, bungalows, laundry, and workshop areas completed at the end of December 1929. The resort also had its own private radio station and airport facility [and railroad link].

"Movie czars and stars, sports notables, diplomats, maharajas, ranking politicians and famous aristocrats mingled there in luxurious surroundings along with more ordinary patrons anxious to see and be seen with such luminaries. Mobsters also dropped in on the scene. Bugsy Siegel visited and imagined a similar plush resort on what became the Las Vegas Strip."

All this came to an end with the repeal of Prohibition in the U.S. and the relaxing of gambling at California racetracks, the development of gambling in Nevada, and, finally, the criminalization of gambling in Mexico in 1935."

Link to my main Agua Caliente page:
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/AguaCalienteChips.htm

Robert