A hand-colored birds-eye view captures the grand Beaux-Arts sweep of Boston's South Station in its Edwardian prime — American flags snap from the roofline, streetcars glide along the elevated railway tracks, and pedestrians in long coats fill the plaza below, all frozen in the summer of 1906. Opened in 1899 as the busiest rail terminal in the world, South Station served as the gateway for millions of New England travelers; the elevated railway visible here was part of the Boston Elevated Railway network that would be dismantled decades later. This card was mailed on August 8, 1906 from the station's own South Postal Station, sent by a traveler — who signs only "Nora" on the front — to a recipient in San Francisco, just months after that city's catastrophic earthquake, making the cross-continental journey all the more evocative. The 1-cent Franklin stamp is neatly canceled with the South Postal Station machine slogan die.