The low-rise city that surrounded Grand Central

Today, Grand Central Terminal is a Beaux-Arts beauty lodged among massive office towers and formidable skyscrapers.

Which makes it so hard to imagine that when it opened in 1913, the buildings around it were lilliputian compared to what is there today.

“This doesn’t look much like the old Grand Central, does it?” the postcard’s sender writes to the recipient. It sure doesn’t—this was the Grand Central (with grazing cows nearby!) that came before it.