Grand by Design

Railroads remake New York

Trade and banking energized New York in the early 1800s, drawing new businesses and people. Growth fueled prosperity. And prosperity fueled more growth.

Railroads were a vital part of this dynamic cycle—both a response to and catalyst for the city’s expansion. Freight and passenger lines blossomed, and in the 1830s New York City’s first railroad line connected Prince Street to the Harlem River, accelerating the city’s expansion northward from Lower Manhattan.

Four Become One

Four competing railroads—the Hudson River, New York Central, New York & Harlem, and New York & New Haven—once linked the city to communities north and east. What happened to them?

During the 1860s, Cornelius Vanderbilt bought controlling stock in the first three, forging them into a single rail empire. Today, all four are united as Metro-North.

Grand Central Depot

Railroads brought people, profits…and pollution. Residents complained. So in 1854 the city banned soot-belching steam engines below 42nd Street, keeping them far from New York’s populated heart. Trains arriving from the north unhitched their engines at 42nd and towed passenger cars the last few miles downtown by horse.

Despite these restrictions, the Hudson, New Haven, and Harlem Railroads were eager to expand. To coordinate their services (and save money) they agreed to share a new transit hub. With 42nd Street the southern limit for steam engines, it was the logical station location.

Grand Central Depot opened in 1871. Three towers represented the three participating railroads. Thirty years later, a new Annex doubled the Depot’s size. But double wasn’t enough. Rail traffic had quadrupled.

East is East, West is West

“The Forty-second street depot is simply an enormous nuisance” making east-west travel “a matter of imminent peril to life and limb,” declared the Real Estate Record in 1872.

Bridges over the tracks helped. But rails still divided East from West. So in 1875, the railroad dug a tunnel from 49th to 97th Street. Gradually, the perilous tracks became posh Park Avenue.

Meet The Vanderbilts

“You have undertaken to cheat me,” Cornelius Vanderbilt wrote to a former associate in 1853. “I won’t sue you…. I’ll ruin you.”

Vanderbilt, America’s first great tycoon, was no stranger to power. Launching a ferryboat service to Staten Island at age 16, he swiftly built a vast shipping business on the Hudson River, Atlantic Coast, and beyond—including steamships to San Francisco during the 1849 Gold Rush—earning himself the nickname “Commodore.”

In the 1850s, Vanderbilt recognized the inefficiency of the fledgling railroad industry, a hodgepodge of competing companies. Shifting his sights from ships to trains, he bought up stock in local railroads, ultimately combining them into a vast transportation network and a powerful family empire that transformed New York’s infrastructure and reshaped the region.

Depot, Station, or Terminal?

Which is correct? Is this building properly Grand Central Depot, Grand Central Station, or Grand Central Terminal?

Yes. It is.

All three are correct…depending on the year. The original 1871 building was Grand Central Depot. It became Grand Central Station after renovation and expansion in 1901. The new building unveiled in 1913—whose centennial we’re celebrating—is Grand Central Terminal.

A Grand Design

New York City and its railroads weren’t shy. They were eager to proclaim their magnificence with a splendid monument—a fitting gateway to the nation’s exuberant financial, commercial, and cultural capital.

Yet Grand Central Terminal was more than just a pretty façade. Behind its lofty arches and elegant marble is a marvel of practical design and innovative engineering. The station not only looked like no other, it functioned like no other, merging elegance with efficiency.

Who Needs a New Station?

Though splendid in its day, the original Grand Central Depot of 1871 had become a 19th century relic struggling to meet the demands of a 20th century city.

Its 30-year-old rail tunnels couldn’t handle the steadily increasing traffic. The building lacked modern conveniences and signaling technology, as well as the infrastructure for electric rail lines. And having been designed for three independent railroad companies—with three separate waiting rooms—the terminal was badly outdated, crowded, and inefficient.

On top of that, the old station no longer reflected its surroundings. In 1870, 42nd Street was still a relative backwater. By 1910, it was the vibrant heart of a dynamic, ambitious, and swiftly growing New York City.

The Electrical Connection

Ash. Soot. Smoke. Steam-powered locomotives were dirty and detested. New York banned them south of 42nd Street in 1854. But they continued operating uptown.

Then, in 1902, two passenger trains collided in the smoke-clogged Park Avenue Tunnel. The state responded by banning steam locomotives within city limits, leaving the railroad in a pickle.

The solution? Electricity. But that meant redesigning the station for the new technology.

The Winner Is…

How to find an architect? Design competitions for major projects were commonplace in the early 1900s, and the railroad launched one in 1903. Four firms entered: McKim Mead & White; Samuel Huckel, Jr.; Reed & Stem; and Daniel Burnham.

Reed & Stem won. Its innovative scheme featured pedestrian ramps inside, and a ramp-like roadway outside that wrapped around the building to connect the northern and southern halves of Park Avenue.

But were these innovations enough to make Grand Central truly grand? The railroad wasn’t sure. So it hired another architect, Warren & Wetmore, which proposed a monumental façade of three triumphal arches.

The two chosen firms collaborated as “Associated Architects.” It was a stormy partnership, but the final design, combined the best ideas of both.

A Delight for the Eye

One of the splendors of Grand Central is that its vast, majestic spaces reveal extraordinary attention to the smallest design detail.

The architects brought in Parisian artist Sylvain Saliéres to craft bronze and stone carvings, including ornamental inscriptions, decorative flourishes, and sculpted oak leaves and acorns (symbols of the Vanderbilt family), including playful carved acorns festooning the Main Waiting Room’s chandeliers.

The architects specified Tennessee marble for the floors, Botticino marble for wall trim, and imitation Caen stone for the walls. The Oyster Bar’s vaulted ceilings are adorned with a herringbone pattern of Guastavino tiles—like those uptown in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. On the exterior, imposing sculptures of Mercury, Hercules, and Minerva top the 42nd Street façade.

Elegance and Efficiency

Looks aren’t everything. New York City’s gateway had to be beautiful, majestic, and functional. The station had to impress people with its scale and style, yet also move travelers and trains swiftly and smoothly.

Behind Grand Central’s decorative flourishes are ingenious solutions. Looping tracks let arriving trains drop off passengers, continue ahead to pick up new passengers, and depart without having to turn around. Layered levels of train and subway lines pack enormous capacity into a relatively small footprint.

No detail was overlooked. When designing the indoor walkway ramps, engineers built mock-ups at various slopes and, according to The New-York Tribune, studied “the gait and gasping limit of lean men…fat men…women with babies…and all other types of travelers” to determine the ideal slope.

An Engineering Marvel

Behind the majestic design and décor of Grand Central Terminal is a triumph of engineering and ingenuity.

Grand Central didn’t just do things better than other train terminals. It did them differently. It pioneered new approaches to organizing space. It invented new technologies. And it overcame the daunting challenge of building a vast, durable, efficient train station—much of it buried deep underground—in the bustling center of the nation’s busiest city.

Efficient by Design

More and more people were riding more and more trains. Grand Central needed additional tracks…and efficient ways for passengers to reach those tracks.

With little space to spread out, the station dug down. Engineers created a vast underground structure: four tracks in the Park Avenue tunnel and a 123-track train shed designed to support heavy locomotives plus the weight of the buildings overhead. A series of crossovers let trains reach any platform from any track. Inside the station, meanwhile, pedestrian ramps took passengers swiftly from level to level.

The design also included a centralized hot water heating system—the largest of its kind at the time—with four miles of pipe serving the station and surrounding buildings.

Inventing the Future

Grand Central was bigger and newer than its predecessor. It was also a technological pioneer.

For the changeover from steam engines to electricity, engineers William Wilgus and Frank Sprague designed a groundbreaking third rail. Train cars made contact with the underside of the power rail, whose top and sides were sheathed in wood to protect workers from electrocution.

Powering Grand Central

Steam engines generate their own power. Electric engines must get it from power plants. In 1910, the railroad built a state-of-the-art electrical substation on 50th Street that converted the city’s alternating current electricity to the direct current used by locomotives.

The facility also featured 14 coal-driven boilers producing hot water to heat Grand Central and neighboring buildings.

Keeping the Traffic Flowing

Most railroad stations built in the early 1900s relied on one centrally located tower to oversee operations. Grand Central has five.

The terminal’s vast network of tracks, divided onto two levels, required the largest traffic control system ever built at the time. Its signal towers communicate closely with each other to route trains through a maze of tracks.

Feats of Engineering

Before construction crews could build the new Grand Central, they had to un-build the old one.

Dismantling a train shed in the middle of Manhattan is no easy task. By day, workers demolished the existing structure section by section. By night, crews lowered discarded material to railcars, which carried it away.

The new station’s vast underground labyrinth of tracks and platforms also required a lot of digging. Workers borrowed techniques recently developed for the Panama Canal to excavate more than three million cubic yards of rock and dirt—roughly four times the volume of the Empire State Building. Hopper cars carted off this material, which the railroad used to construct a new train yard at Croton-on-Hudson.

No Basements? No Worries!

Ever wonder why you need an escalator to reach the elevator lobby in the MetLife Building, the skyscraper north of Grand Central?

Burying the train tracks underground made it possible to build buildings above them. It also meant that those buildings had no basements for mechanical systems. In the MetLife Building, elevator equipment—normally housed underground—fills the first three floors.

Going Places!

New York is famed as the city that never sleeps. But it’s also the city that never sits still. Tourists, commuters, business visitors—New York is a boisterous ballet of coming and going. And Grand Central helps keep it moving.

Originally, long distance travel was the centerpiece of Grand Central. But a post-war decline in intercity trains triggered the terminal’s bumpy—yet ultimately successful—transformation into a regional commuter hub.

Traveling in Style

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 1902 to 1967.

Train travel in the early 1900s wasn’t just a way to get somewhere. It was an event. Red Caps inside the terminal carried your luggage; dining cars aboard the train served sumptuous meals; and the long distance trains departing from Grand Central’s upper level took passengers across the country in comfort and style.

In the 1950s, travelers increasingly took to the air and the highways. Luxury trains declined. After the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads merged in 1968, the remaining long-distance routes gradually migrated from Grand Central to Penn Station.

The Water Level Route

“You Can Sleep,” boasted ads for the New York Central’s Water Level Route.

The railroad’s trains to Chicago and the Midwest ran along the Hudson River and Lake Michigan. The route was nearly flat, providing a smooth, restful journey. This contrasted with the Chicago-bound trains of its crosstown rival the Pennsylvania Railroad, a rollercoaster ride through the Allegheny Mountains.

The Daily Commute

If long distance trains were the posh celebrities of Grand Central, the commuter lines were the less glamorous but vital workhorses that kept the city humming. These Suburban Lines were originally confined to the lower level, where amenities ranged from a newsstand to a telegraph office.

There were no red carpets to match those rolled out for the 20th Century Limited. But there should have been, considering commuter rail’s vital role in shaping the city. Efficient commuter service fueled New York’s prosperity, filling its skyscrapers, lofts, and factories every day with workers from across the region. It also spurred suburban growth, linking far-flung bedroom communities to midtown.

Today, commuter travel is the centerpiece of Grand Central.

All Together Now

At the boisterous birth of train travel, rival railroads scrambled to lay track. This competition forged a vast rail network. It also created an inefficient jumble of services.

Gradually, rival lines united. Commodore Vanderbilt combined several railroads in the 1860s. A century later in, the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad merged. Finally, in 1971, 20 of America’s 26 major passenger lines joined for the country’s first national railroad: Amtrak.

Not All Passengers Are People

Trains crisscrossing the country carry mail as well as travelers. A 1915 article described Grand Central’s “wonderful assortment of elaborate machinery for handling the mail...a system of belts that convey the bags all over the floor and finally to the chutes that lead into the side doors of the mail cars.”

Today, the Grand Central Post Office still processes much of the city’s mail.

Making Midtown into MID Town

Midtown used to be uptown.

When Grand Central Depot opened in 1871, 42nd Street was relatively remote, an undeveloped tract north of the city’s heart of commerce, Lower Manhattan. But by 1900 the city had expanded to reach this neighborhood, and the station couldn’t handle the growing crush of travelers.

The Grand Central Terminal we know today, unveiled in 1913, reflected the neighborhood’s growth. It also accelerated the neighborhood’s growth, attracting more development…which in turn increased the station’s role.

There Grows the Neighborhood!

Grand Central is more than a train station. It’s the heart of a remarkable urban campus, a sprawling complex of shops, office towers, hotels, and swank apartments built above the tracks and tunnels.

A warren of pipes, passageways, and ducts links Grand Central to many buildings in what came to be called “Terminal City,” providing them with heat from its steam plant and power from its electrical substation.

Terminal City

Entrepreneurs have always sold real estate. But the New York Central pioneered the idea of selling “unreal” estate, the empty space above its property.

William Wilgus, the railroad’s chief engineer, realized that burying the train tracks underground created an unprecedented opportunity. The area over the tracks could be leased to developers—the first-ever reference to “air rights.” This innovation helped pay for Grand Central and had a profound impact on the neighborhood, creating new building lots in the midst of a crowded business district.

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.

Building Boom. Building Break. Building Boom.

Grand Central inspired a whirlwind of construction through the 1920s, from the Graybar Building to splendid hotels like the Biltmore and Park Lane. Development took a break during the Depression. But that wasn’t the end of the story—just the end of the first act.

After World War II, renewed prosperity and pent-up demand reinvigorated growth. Between 1952 and 1979, towering glass and steel skyscrapers replaced more than 15 of Terminal City’s Beaux-Arts buildings.

New York’s Town Square

Train stations are all about travel. But Grand Central doesn’t just help you reach your destination. 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.

Inspiring Creativity

Grand Central Terminal is a work of art. It also became a place to display and create works of art. The terminal was home to the Grand Central Art Galleries from 1922 to 1958, and for a time housed the Grand Central School of Art on the seventh floor.

Grand Central also has hosted creative performances, ranging from Philippe Petit’s 1987 high wire walk…to exhibitions such as this one!

A Place to Gather

People have an irrepressible desire to congregate—to celebrate, protest, mourn, or just to be with others. Grand Central is where New Yorkers come together.

During World War II, troops thronged the terminal’s U.S.O Canteen. People have assembled here to pray together, taken refuge during blackouts, and sought solace at memorials for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Martin Luther King, and victims of September 11th.

A Bully Pulpit

Want to reach a broad audience? Want to attract attention? Come to Grand Central.

CBS Television broadcast live from studios at the terminal in the 1950s, and the network’s master control room was here until 1964. 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.

Playtime

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. Its tennis club—recently refurbished— first opened in 1965.

Decline & Renewal

In 2013 we celebrated Grand Central’s Centennial. But we could easily have been mourning its loss.

After World War II, waning long-distance rail travel sparked questions about the station’s future. Many felt it had outlived its usefulness. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, rising crime and declining budgets took a toll on the building.

But supporters rallied around Grand Central. They fought for landmark protection. They raised public awareness…which helped the MTA raise money. Today, loving restoration has revitalized the terminal.

Threats

Tear it down. That was the New York Central’s recommendation in 1954. Suffering financial woes, the railroad proposed demolishing Grand Central and replacing it with a flamboyant 80-story tower by architect I.M. Pei.

Ultimately, the railroad spared the station, choosing instead to build a skyscraper in place of its offices north of the terminal. Work began in 1960 on the 59-story Pan Am (now MetLife) Building. But though Grand Central didn’t fall victim to the wrecking ball, it did fall victim to age, budget cuts, and neglect—as did much of New York’s infrastructure.

Vandalism increased in the 1960s and 1970s. Repairs were delayed. Decades of grime covered the once-beautiful ceiling, and passengers shared waiting rooms with a swelling number of homeless men and women.

Intervention

Pennsylvania Station, one of the city’s architectural gems, was demolished in 1963. That loss galvanized a broad-based movement to save Grand Central from a similar fate. But preservationists faced stiff opposition.

There were many proposals for replacing or changing Grand Central, including a design by architect Marcel Breuer for a 55-story tower atop the terminal. The railroad, joined by eager developers, tussled with the new Landmarks Preservation Commission and challenged the landmarks law in court. To counter them, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and architect Philip Johnson founded the Committee to Save Grand Central Station in 1975.

In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Grand Central’s landmark status. The building was saved from destruction…but not from neglect.

Restoration and Rebirth

The Landmarks Preservation Commission protected Grand Central from demolition. But the dilapidated terminal was still ailing.

Restoring its former glory required an owner that recognized the station’s beauty and potential, craftsmen able to renovate its battered décor, and strong public support. It also required money.

In 1982, Metro-North took over the terminal—now primarily a commuter hub—and launched a four-year, $12 million repair program that stopped further deterioration but didn’t erase decades of decay. In 1990, Metro-North announced ambitious plans to restore the station’s structural, architectural, and decorative glory. Peter E. Stangl, Metro-North’s first president and later Chairman of the MTA, led these efforts.

Metro-North’s vision went far beyond simply refurbishing the building. Its master plan reimagined Grand Central as a vibrant shopping and dining destination, reclaiming its role as New York’s town square.

The Next 100 Years

The struggle to save and restore Grand Central preserved an icon of New York’s past. In coming decades, the challenge will be ensuring that Grand Central serves New York’s future.

The terminal must remain an uplifting, glorious public space. But it also must meet the region’s evolving transportation needs. Current work to expand Grand Central by opening it to commuters from Long Island is an exciting first step in launching its second 100 years.

From East…to East

You live on Long Island, which is east of Manhattan. You work on Manhattan’s East Side. Yet your commute takes you across town and leaves you on the West Side. What’s wrong with this picture?

East Side access will bring Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) trains to Grand Central, enabling an estimated 160,000 LIRR commuters who work on the East Side to avoid trekking from the West Side by bus, subway, taxi, or on foot.

The expanded service—which has been on the drawing board since the late 1960s—also will establish connections between the LIRR and Metro-North lines, as well as linking Grand Central to the JFK Airport via the AirTrain through Jamaica Station in Queens.

Dig It!

Step outside Grand Central. Look around. You’ll notice a building or two. Maybe some cars.

The neighborhood is among the most densely packed in the world, with streets, skyscrapers, people, and traffic above ground and a labyrinth of cables, sewers, steam pipes, and of course train tracks below. Bringing the Long Island Rail Road to this crowded urban thicket is challenging.

Seven miles of new underground track will link Grand Central to the LIRR facilities in Long Island City via the existing 63rd Street tunnel. Excavating the new connections requires different equipment on either side of the river: soft-ground boring machines for the sand and gravel in Queens, hard-rock machines to slice through solid rock in Manhattan.

Tomorrow’s Terminal

The new Long Island Rail terminal—Manhattan’s first major terminal in more than 90 years—will be underground: deep below Park Avenue, between 44th and 48th Streets.

On the lower levels, steel and glass will create a sleek, modern feel. As passengers rise toward street level, however, visual references to Grand Central’s Beaux-Arts style will create a smooth transition to the century-old landmark above.