John the Divine. New York is famed as the city that never sleeps. Tourists, commuters, business visitors—New York is a boisterous ballet of coming and going. Grand Central helps keep it moving. Originally, long distance travel was the centerpiece of Grand Central. Every afternoon, a red carpet unrolled to greet passengers boarding the magnificent 20th Century Limited to Chicago, the glittering gem of the New York Central Railroad from to It was an event.
In the s, travelers increasingly took to the air and the highways. Luxury trains declined. Midtown used to be uptown. Grand Central is more than a train station. Entrepreneurs have always sold real estate. It also meant that instead of being circled by a bleak buffer of rail yards, as were most urban stations, Grand Central would be surrounded by expensive offices, hotels, restaurants, shops, and fashionable homes—all with convenient access to transportation.
Grand Central inspired a whirlwind of construction through the s, from the Graybar Building to splendid hotels like the Biltmore and Park Lane.
Development took a break during the Depression. After World War II, renewed prosperity and pent-up demand reinvigorated growth. It is a destination. Grand Central is a unique urban space: majestic yet approachable, decorative yet functional. For a century, New Yorkers have used Grand Central as their town commons, a beloved gathering place for shared experiences, distinctive displays, and important events—a home for broadcast studios, rallies, art exhibits, and tightrope walkers. Grand Central Terminal is a work of art.
It also became a place to display, inspire, and create other works of art. The terminal was home to the Grand Central Art Galleries from to , and for a time housed the Grand Central School of Art on the seventh floor.
Want to reach a broad audience? Want to attract attention? Come to Grand Central. A generation later, StoryCorps—which records oral histories by ordinary people and preserves them at the Library of Congress—was born at a booth in Grand Central. You expect to hear the chug of locomotives at a train station.
But what about the ping of tennis balls? The whirr of jump ropes? The muffled thud of boxing gloves? All have echoed here. People pass through Grand Central heading to work…but also come here to play.
The terminal has hosted boxing and Double Dutch tournaments, break dancing, and more. By , Grand Central Terminal was in total disarray. It was only a matter of time before Grand Central became a target for demolition. The first recommendation to tear down Grand Central came all the way back in It was part of the initial plan the railroad companies proposed when they first encountered financial difficulties. Instead, they began selling adjacent properties in hopes the rail market would return.
This led to activists shifting their focus to protect Grand Central. They were successful in getting Grand Central labeled as a landmark and protected by preservation laws, but the developers and the railroad were desperate to bring it down.
The impasse between the two parties led to a legal battle that would last years. Still, in it seemed as if Grand Central Terminal would eventually be destroyed and replaced by a high-rise, high-rent office building. Three years later, the case reached all the way to the U. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court would uphold the landmark status of the station, and would end any discussion of destruction of the building. Unfortunately, though, it was still in dire need of restoration. Grand Central Terminal was saved from the wrecking ball in , but it still needed attention.
There were multiple phases of restoration beginning with exterior cleaning in It was the first exterior restoration the building had ever undergone.
Then, in , the new owners, Metro-North, began a major restoration project that would turn the terminal into the tourist destination we know today. Today, Grand Central Terminal is a perfect monument to the heights of the American railroad industry.
The building itself is far more than just four walls and a ceiling, it is an icon — a slice of early 20 th century Americana in the heart of New York City. The value of the building is far greater than the value of the real estate upon which it resides.
Had it been destroyed in the s or s, these memories would never be made. Today, hundreds of thousands of tourists and commuters visit Grand Central Terminal daily. Kids cheer in delight as their parents snap photos of the famous sky mural or pristine white sculptures and decorative details. In , four German spies snuck on to Long Island with plans to destroy key logistical locations in the northeast, including Grand Central.
Find out more about M42 here. For some, that wish was a reality. During his time in office, President Franklin Roosevelt once utilized a secret rail line, Track 61, which provided an underground connection between Grand Central and the nearby Waldorf-Astoria hotel. General John J Pershing also used it on a visit to the city in For much of its history the terminal has served as an important cultural hub for the city of New York.
There was even an art school, established in the s by a group of painters included John Singer Sargent, which offered lessons to hundreds of students before closing in And while the station has provided a backdrop to countless books, movies and television shows, few people realize that during the early days of television, dozens of programs were filmed and broadcast out of studios located above the famed Oyster Bar. The studios have long since been converted, in part, to a series of private tennis courts.
In an effort to ally these fears the U. Later that year they installed a Redstone rocket in the main concourse. To stabilize the rocket in the grand hall, a hole was pierced into the ceiling to secure a wire that held the rocket in place. The massive celestial ceiling that adorns the main concourse is depicted not from earth looking up, but rather from beyond the constellations looking down toward earth through them.
The true reason for the perspective has never been uncovered, and theories vary. The cause of the thick grime was the decades of air pollutants that wafted in through the terminal's open windows.
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