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The Main Concourse is the center of Grand Central. The space is cavernous and usually filled with bustling crowds. The ticket booths are here, although many now stand unused or repurposed since the introduction of ticket vending machines.

The main information booth is in the center of the Concourse. This is a perennial meeting place, and the four-faced clock on top of the information booth is perhaps the most recognizable icon of Grand Central Terminal. Each of the four clock faces are made from opal, and both Sotheby's and Christie's have estimated the value to be between ten and twenty million dollars. Within the marble and brass pagoda lies a secret door which conceals a spiral staircase leading to the lower level information booth.

Outside the station, the clock in front of the Grand Central facade facing 42nd Street contains the world’s largest example of Tiffany glass and is surrounded by sculptures carved by the John Donnelly Company of Minerva, Hercules and Mercury. For the terminal building French sculptor Jules-Alexis Coutan created what was at the time of its unveiling, 1914, considered to be the largest sculptural group in the world. It was 48 feet (14.6 m) high, the clock in the center having a circumference of 13 feet (4 m).

The upper level tracks are reached from the Grand Concourse or from various hallways and passages branching off from it.

Ceiling

In 1999, a twelve-year restoration of Grand Central revealed to commuters that the concourse had an elaborately decorated astrological ceiling—painted in 1912 by French artist Paul César Helleu—which had previously been obscured by decades of what people thought was coal and diesel smoke. Spectroscopic examination revealed that it was actually tar and nicotine from cigarette smoke. If one looks carefully, a single dark patch remains above Michael Jordon's Steak House. This small portion was left untouched by renovators to remind people of the grime that once covered the ceiling.

There are two peculiarities to this ceiling. First, the sky is backwards. Second, all of the stars are slightly displaced compared to the current sky. One explanation is that the ceiling is based on a medieval manuscript, which visualized the sky as it would look from outside the celestial sphere: This is why the constellations are backwards. Since the celestial sphere is an abstraction (stars are not all at equal distances from Earth), this view does not correspond to the actual view from anywhere in the universe. The reason for the displacement of the stars is that the manuscript showed a (reflected) view of the sky in the Middle Ages, and since then the stars have shifted due to precession of the equinoxes. Most people, however, simply think that that Helleu reversed the image by accident. Embarrassed, the Vanderbilts explained it away by saying that the ceiling depicted the heavens as it would look outside the celestial sphere, from God's vantage point.

It is also interesting to note that there is a small dark cirle in the midst of the stars right above the image of Pisces. In a 1957 attempt to counteract feelings of insecurity spawned by the Russian launch of Sputnik, Grand Central's main lobby played host to an American Redstone missile. The Redstone was six inches too tall for the lobby and a hole had to be cut in the ceiling to fit the massive missile.

Dining Concourse

The Dining Concourse is below the Main Concourse. It contains many fast food outlets and restaurants, the world-famous Oyster Bar with its Guastavino tile vaults, and provides access to the lower level tracks. The two levels are connected by numerous stairs, ramps, and escalators.

Vanderbilt Hall

Vanderbilt Hall, named for the Vanderbilt family who built and owned the station, is located just off the Main Concourse. It is used and rented out for various events.

Omega Board

The Omega Board was an electromechanical display mounted in Grand Central Terminal used to display the times and track numbers of arriving and departing trains. Shaped like a large black block with rows of flip panels to display train information on the front, the Board was visually incongruous with the rest of the terminal; its boxy shape contrasted strongly with the classical design of the Terminal. It was replaced with a more aesthetically fitting electronic display during renovation of Grand Central Terminal in the 1990s.

Subway station

The subway platforms at Grand Central are reached from the Main Concourse. Built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) rather than the New York Central Railroad, the subway areas of the station lack the majesty that is present throughout most of the rest of Grand Central, although they are in similar condition to Grand Central's actual track levels. The Grand Central shuttle platforms were originally the Grand Central express stop on the original IRT line, opened in 1904. Once the IRT Lexington Avenue Line was extended uptown in 1918, the original tracks were converted to shuttle use. One track remains connected to the downtown Lexington Avenue local track but is not in revenue service. A fire in the 1960s destroyed much of the shuttle station, which has been rebuilt. The only sign of the fire damage is truncated steel beams visible above the platforms.

Grand Central North

Grand Central North is a relatively recent addition that provides access to Grand Central from 47th and 48th streets. It is connected to the Main Concourse through two long hallways, known as the Northwest and Northeast passages, which run parallel to the tracks.

History

Three buildings serving essentially the same function have stood on this site. The original large and imposing scale was intended by the New York Central Railroad to enhance competition and compare favorably in the public eye with the arch-rival Pennsylvania Railroad and smaller lines.

Grand Central Depot

Grand Central Depot was designed to bring the trains of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad together in one large station. The station opened in October 1871, but the exact dates are not clear. The original plan was for the Harlem Railroad to start using it on October 9, 1871 (moving from their 27th Street depot), the New Haven Railroad on October 16, and the Hudson River Railroad on October 23, with the staggering done to minimize confusion. However the Hudson River Railroad didn't move to it until November 1, which puts the other two dates in doubt. The headhouse building containing passenger service areas and railroad offices was an "L" shape with a short leg running east-west on 42nd Street and a long leg running north-south on Vanderbilt Avenue. The train shed, north and east of the headhouse, had two innovations in U.S. practice: the platforms were elevated to the height of the cars and the roof was a balloon shed with a clear span over all of the tracks.

The New Haven and New York Central trains were initially in side by side different stations creating chaos in baggage transfer. The combined Grand Central Station combined the two railroads.

Cornelius Vanderbilt died on the same day that a blizzard caused a collapse of the Grand Central depot glass roof.

Grand Central Station

• The exterior of Grand Central Station c. 1904.
• The interior of Grand Central Station c. 1904.

Between 1899 and 1900, the headhouse was essentially demolished (it was expanded from 3 to 6 stories and an entirely new facade put on it) but the train shed was kept. The tracks that had previously continued south of 42nd Street were removed and the train yard reconfigured in an effort to reduce congestion and turn-around time for trains. The reconstructed building was renamed Grand Central Station.

Grand Central Terminal

Construction

Between 1903 and 1913, the entire building was torn down in phases and replaced by the current Grand Central Terminal which was designed by the architectural firms of Reed and Stern and Warren and Wetmore who entered an agreement to act as the associated architects of Grand Central Terminal in February of 1904. Reed & Stern were responsible for the overall design of the station, Warren and Wetmore added architectural details and the Beaux-Arts style. Charles Reed was appointed the chief executive for the collaboration between the two firms on the project who promtly appointed Alfred T. Fellheimer head of the combined design team. This work was accompanied by the electrification of the three railroads using the station and the burial of the approach in the Park Avenue tunnel. The result of this was the creation of several blocks worth of prime real estate in Manhattan, which were then sold for a large sum of money.

For the Terminal Building French sculptor Jules-Alexis Coutan created what was at the time of its unveiling, 1914, considered to be the largest sculptural group in the world. It was 48 feet high, the clock in the center having a circumference of 13 feet. It depicted Mercury flanked by Hercules and Minerva and was carved by the John Donnelly Company.

Covering Park Avenue

In order to accommodate the ever-growing rail traffic into the restricted Midtown area, William J. Wilgus, chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad took advantage of the recent electrification technology to propose a novel scheme: a bi-level station situated below ground.

Incoming trains would go underground under Park Avenue, and proceed to an upper-level incoming station if they were mainline trains, or further below to a lower-level platform if they were suburban trains. In addition, turning loops within the station itself obviated complicated switching moves to bring back the trains to the coach yards for servicing. Outgoing mainline trains were backed-up the conventional way to upper-level platforms.

Burying electric trains underground brought an additional advantage to the railroads: the ability to sell above-ground air rights over the tracks and platforms for real-estate development. With time, all the area around Grand Central Terminal saw prestigious apartment and office buildings being erected, which turned the area into the most desirable commercial office district of Manhattan.

The terminal also did away with bifurcating Park Avenue by introducing a "circumferential elevated driveway" that allowed Park Avenue traffic to traverse around the Terminal building and over 42nd Street without encumbering nearby streets. The terminal building was also designed to be able to eventually reconnect both segments of 43rd Street by going through the concourse if the City of New York demanded it.

Terminal City

The construction of Grand Central created a mini-city within New York, including a Commodore Hotel and various office buildings. It spurred construction throughout the neighborhood in the 1920s including the Chrysler Building.

In 1928, the New York Central built its headquarters in a 34-story building (now called the Helmsley Building) straddling Park Avenue on the north side of the Terminal's office building.

From 1948 to 1964 CBS headquartered its intial television broadcasting center in the station until 1964 in "Studio 40." The CBS Evening News began its broadcasts there with Douglas Edwards. Many of the historic events during this period, such as John Glenn's Mercury Atlas 6 space mission, were broadcast from this location (although the Walter Cronkite broadcasts were from studios in Washington, D.C.). Broadcasts from the studio were famed for shaky videos caused by train arrivals.

Proposals for demolition and towers

In 1947, over 65 million people – the equivalent of 40 percent of the population of the United States traveled through Grand Central. However railroads soon fell into a major decline with competition from automobiles and intercity plane traffic.

In 1954 William Zeckendorf proposed replacing Grand Central with an 80-story, 4.8-million square foot tower, 500 feet taller than the Empire State Building. I.M. Pei created a pinched-cylinder design took the form of a glass cylinder with a wasp waist. The plan was abandoned. In 1955 Erwin S. Wolfson made his first proposal for a tower north of the Terminal replacing the Terminal's six-story office building. A revised Wolfson plan was approved in 1958 and the PanAm Building (now the MetLife Building was completed in 1963).

Although the PanAm building bought time for the terminal, the New York Central Railroad continued its precipitous decline. In 1968 facing bankruptcy it merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad to form the Penn Central Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad was in its own precipitous decline and in 1964 had demolished Pennsylvania Station to make way for an office building and the new Madison Square Garden.

In 1968 Penn Central unveiled plans for a tower designed by Marcel Breuer even bigger than the PanAm building to be built over Grand Central.

The plans drew huge opposition including most prominently Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She said

"Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud monuments, until there will be nothing left of all her history and beauty to inspire our children? If they are not inspired by the past of our city, where will they find the strength to fight for her future? Americans care about their past, but for short term gain they ignore it and tear down everything that matters. Maybe… this is the time to take a stand, to reverse the tide, so that we won't all end up in a uniform world of steel and glass boxes."

New York City filed a suit to stop the construction. The resulting case, Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978), was the first time that the Supreme Court ruled on a matter of historic preservation. The Court saved the terminal, basing its decision on the notion that only if a change to a historic structure prevented said structure's owner from bankruptcy could such an alteration be made.

Penn Central went into bankruptcy in 1970 in what was then the biggest corporate bankruptcy in American history. Its successor, American Premier Underwriters, continues to own the station. The MTA via Metro North in 1993 signed a long term lease and began a massive restoration.

Restorations

Donald Trump

Grand Central both inside and outside and its neighborhood fell on hard times during the financial collapse of its host railroads as well as the near bankruptcy of New York City itself.

In 1974 Donald Trump bought the Commodore Hotel to the east of the terminal for $10 million and then worked out a deal with Jay Pritzker to transform it into one of the first Grand Hyatt hotels. Trump negotiated various tax breaks and in the process agreed to renovate the exterior of the terminal. He hung a huge "TRUMP" banner on the terminal during the restoration. In the same deal Trump optioned Penn Central's rail yards on the Hudson River between 59th and 72nd Streets that would eventually become Trump Place—the biggest private development in New York City history.

The Grand Hyatt was to open in 1980 and the neighborhood immediately began a transformation. Trump was to sell his interest in the hotel for $142 million. It established Trump as a big time player in New York real estate.

Metro-North

Throughout this period the interior of Grand Central was characterized by huge billboard advertisements with perhaps the most famous being the giant Kodak Colorama photos running along the entire east side of the terminal and the Westclox "Big Ben" clock over the south concourse.

Amtrak left the station on April 7, 1991, with the completion of the Empire Connection, which allowed trains from Albany, Toronto and Montreal to directly serve Penn Station. Previously, travellers would have to change stations via subway, bus, or cab. Since then, Grand Central has exclusively served Metro-North Railroad.

In 1993 the the MTA and Metro-North signed a long term lease on the building and began massive renovations. All the billboards were removed. These renovations were mostly finished in 1998, though some of the minor refits (such as the replacement of eletromechanical train info displays by the entry of each track with electronic displays) were not completed until 2000. The most striking effect was the restoration of the Main Concourse ceiling, revealing the painted skyscape and constellations which had been painted in 1912 by French artist Paul César Helleu and that had been hidden beneath soot and grime. Other modifications included a complete overhaul of the Terminal's superstructure and the replacement of the electromechanical Omega Board train arrival/departure display with a purely electronic display that was designed to fit into the architecture of the Terminal aesthetically.

The exterior is once again being cleaned and restored, starting with the west façade on Vanderbilt Avenue and gradually working counterclockwise. The northern facade, abutting the MetLife Building, will be left as is. The project involves cleaning the facade, rooftop light courts and statues; filling in cracks, repointing the stones on the façade, restoring the copper roof and the building's cornice, repairing the large windows of the Main Concourse, and removing the remaining blackout paint that was applied to the windows during World War II. The result will be a cleaner, more attractive and structurally sound exterior, and the windows will allow much more light into the Main Concourse. The work should be finished in 2007; as of 2006, restoration of the west and south façades has been completed.

LIRR's East Side Access Project

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is the in the midst of an ambitious project to bring Long Island Rail Road trains into the terminal called the East Side Access. The project was spurred by a study that showed that more than half of the LIRR riders work closer to Grand Central than Penn Station.

The project will not run on existing track, nor will it compete with existing Metro-North service. Instead, a new bi-level, eight-track tunnel will be excavated under Park Avenue, more than ninety feet below the existing Metro-North track and more than 140 feet below the surface. Commuters on the lowest level, more than 175 feet deep, will take about 10 minutes to reach the street.

LIRR trains would access Park Avenue via the existing lower level of the 63rd Street Tunnel, connecting to the the railroad's main line running through Sunnyside Yards in Queens. Extensions are being added on both the Manhattan and Queens sides.

Cost estimates jumped from $4.4 billion in 2004 to $6.4 billion in 2006. The MTA has said that some small buildings on on the route in Manhattan will be torn down to make way for air vents. Edward Cardinal Egan has criticized the plan, noting concerns about the tracks, which will largely be on the west side of Park Avenue, and their impact on St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The project is scheduled for completion by 2012.

Impact on design of transit centers

The design for Grand Central Terminal was an innovation in the way transit hubs were designed, and continues to influence designers to this day. One new concept was the use of ramps (as opposed to staircases) for conducting the flow of traffic through the facility (as well as aiding with the transport of luggage to and from the trains). Another was the wrapping of Park Avenue around the Terminal above the street, creating a second level for the picking up and dropping off of passengers. As airline travel superseded the railroads in the latter half of the 20th century, the design innovations of Grand Central Terminal were later incorporated into the hub airports that were built.

Grand Central Terminal in popular culture

As an accessible, photogenic New York City landmark, and as one of the prototypical Manhattan experiences, the terminal has had many appearances in pop culture.

The terminal is seen in films such as North by Northwest, Chronos, Men in Black, Carlito's Way, Extreme Measures, K-PAX, Madagascar, and is prominently featured in two 1940s MGM films, The Clock and Grand Central Murder. In Terry Gilliam's 1991 The Fisher King, Grand Central commuters burst into a spontaneous waltz. The front of the terminal is seen in the opening scenes of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

In fiction, atomic pioneer Leo Szilard (one of the senior researchers on the Manhattan Project) wrote a short story entitled "Grand Central Station," about alien scientists who explore Grand Central Station as part of their mission to learn how life on Earth became extinct. A highly-regarded novel, By Grand Central Station I sat down and Wept, was written by Elizabeth Smart, in 1945.

And a dramatic radio program called "Grand Central Station" was broadcast from 1937 through 1995, beginning on the NBC Radio Blue Network, and opening with the words, "As a bullet train seeks its target, shining rails in every part of our great country are aimed at Grand Central Station, heart of the nation's greatest city."

The first four episodes of the long-running TV panel show "What's My Line?" were broadcast from CBS Studio 41, which was located in an upstairs area of Grand Central Terminal. The episodes aired from Feb. 20 to March 16, 1950.

In the movie Superman, starring Christopher Reeve, Grand Central Terminal is depicted as having an abandoned section underground that is used as headquarters by Lex Luthor, and more than one short story describes abandoned sections of Grand Central that lead the protagonists into adventure.

In the hit '80s cartoon The Real Ghostbusters, the protagonists visited the terminal three times. Once in the episode "Last Train To Oblivion," then in "Look Homeward Ray" and finally in "I Am The City." The Extreme Ghostbusters visited it in "Be Careful What You Wish For" and it featured incorrectly as Penn Station (to the point of featuring the long demolished Penn Station exterior and Grand Central's main concourse).

During a segment on Robot Chicken, the protagonist of the skit tells a taxi driver the actual name of Grand Central Terminal. The scene continues on to her riding Metro-North Railroad, saying that the Hudson Line rules, and that she saved $5 on a monthly Uni-Ticket pass.

Grand Central was destroyed by meteorites in Armageddon.

In 2003, Grand Central Terminal was featured in the Peanuts home video, I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown.

In 2006, Grand Central Station was used as a trick question in the movie Inside Man.

Statistics

Size

Covers 49 acres (20 ha) of land, 33 miles (53 km) of track, 44 platforms

Trains

660 Metro-North commuter trains

Commuters

About 125,000 a day

Visitors

575,000 a day

Cost of renovation 1996–98

250 million dollars

Retail Businesses

95

Oldest Business

Oyster Bar, opened 1913

Meals served in terminal daily

10,000

Percentage of trains on time

98

Items in lost and found

19,000

Most frequently lost item

Coats

Return Rate

Over 60%, close to 98% for computers and iPods

See also

• Pennsylvania Station
• Transportation in New York City
• Buildings and architecture of New York City
• Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City

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External links

• History of Grand Central Terminal - About.com
• Secrets of Grand Central Terminal
• Grand Central Terminal
• Inside Grand Central

• New York Architecture Images- Grand Central Terminal
• Movies Set in Grand Central
• gallery of photographs
• Time lapse photograph of the grand central
• Illustrated discussion of Grand Central Terminal's spatial psychology
• Railstastions.org : The Railroad Architecture of Alfred T. Fellheimer
• NATIONAL PRESERVATION AWARD GOES TO GRAND CENTRAL STATION, Press Release, October 7, 1999
• Time Lapse Video of Grand Central Station

References

• Local News in Brief, New York Times September 29, 1871 page 8
• The Grand Central Railroad Depot, Harlem Railroad, New York Times October 1, 1871 page 6
• Local News in Brief, New York Times November 1, 1871 page 8
• Federal Writer's Project, New York City Guide, Random House Publishers, New York 1939
• Fried, Frederick & Edmund V. Gillon, Jr., New York Civic Sculpture. Dover Publications, New York, 1973
• Reed, Henry Hope, Edmund V. Gillon, JR., Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York: A Photographic Guide, Dover Publications, New York 1988
• Stern, Gilmartin & Massengale, New York 1900, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 1983