The above postcard shows the Lake Mattamuskeet hotel and restaurant in New Holland, NC. The building used to be a pumping station, but it was converted to a lodge in 1937. We had originally described the postcard as showing a lodge and a lighthouse, but that is not the case: although it’s been painted in the same pattern as the Bodie Island Lighthouse, shown below, it’s actually a smokestack that was converted into an observation tower when the hotel opened!
I notice in searching the NCC online that this is one of (at least) five promotional postcards in a series distributed at the New York World’s Fair of 1939. And an unlikely mix it is: Lake Mattamuskeet, the Rockingham County Courthouse, Morganton (“Gateway to the Blue Ridge Mountains”), downtown Wendell and the Charlotte airport. In the captions we learn that the airport “is equipped with a radio beam and commercial planes effect safe landings in all varieties of weather” and that Wendell is “progressive and sound.”