Early automobile and open touring car parked at the foot of the grand staircase of Cornell University's Auditorium — now known as Bailey Hall — just two years after the building opened in 1912. Designed by Buffalo architect Edward Brodhead Green in the Greek Revival style, with a colonnaded portico and sweeping monumental stairs, it was built by New York State for the College of Agriculture and quickly became the university's largest performance and assembly space, seating nearly 2,000. The early auto in the foreground — a detail that stamps the image unmistakably as 1910s America — makes this one of the more evocative early Cornell campus views. Paul mailed this to a woman in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in November 1914, noting that a box of rabbit and squirrel meat had arrived and "certainly tastes fine."

• Caption: The Auditorium, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.
• Card no.: 219522
• Postmark: Ithaca, NY, Nov. 4, 1914
• Status: Posted
• Notable stamp: Scott 405 — U.S. 1c Washington, green, 1912