More than you ever wanted to know about Grand Central Terminal

Today I took a public tour of Grand Central Terminal led by a sweet elderly man from Brooklyn who loves New York about as much as anyone can love anything. The tours have been given once a week for free to the public for over 35 years, and are led by members of New York’s Municipal Art Society. The MAS is responsible for the intelligent design, planning, and preservation of buildings and cultural spots in New York and leads walking tours all over the city, which I definitely want to check out in the future.

A shot of the front of Grand Central with the Chrysler Building in the background 

The tour started in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, which is about the size of a football field with over 12 stories of open air above you. There are three huge windows at the east and west ends of the space, each over 60 feet tall. Inside of the windows there are actually glass walkways that connect to buildings on either side of the terminal. The ceiling is completely covered with one of the largest murals ever constructed – a beautiful turquoise rendering of the sky and constellations with hundreds of fiber optic lights that twinkle at night. Controversy arose during the creation of the mural: the artist decided to paint the constellations from God’s perspective instead of man, causing a rift among the building’s creators. But, the artist ended up getting his way, and now we are able to look up to the heavens and “see what God sees” as he looks down to Earth. Inside the terminal there is marble everywhere sourced from all over the world, ranging from Tennessee to Italy to France. The clock above the information booth alone is worth several million dollars as it is plated with gold and cased in opaline glass.

The multi-million dollar clock

So, why all the class? The current Grand Central was constructed starting in 1903 when New York was still an industrial (and quite dirty) town. Why was the train station coated in marble and glass? According to our guide, almost everyone travelled by train to New York back in the day, so Grand Central was pretty much the first stop in the city for all visitors. Wanting to make a good impression on those travelers, the terminal’s creators decided to get fancy. They wanted to show the world what they thought of New York and what they thought it could become. And now, over 100 years later, the building is a historic landmark and quite a sight to see.

Starting in the 1960’s a lot of facilities like Grand Central were torn down due to the replacement of travel by airplane and cars. There was an urban flight out of the cities and into the suburbs, and less of a need for stations like Grand Central and Penn Station. Companies bought out and tore down the grand facilities erected at the turn of the century to build modern skyscrapers for their growing business – this is what happened to Penn Station, which is a very small fraction of what it once was. In 1967, however, Grand Central became an official historic landmark and was saved from demolition. In the 1980’s it underwent a $200 million renovation. I had a hard time understanding how one could spend $200 million on a face lift for a building, until our guide pointed out a small square near the lower part of the ceiling showing what it looked like prior to renovation. It was almost completely black, which apparently was 80% due to cigarette smoke. Holy smokes! It was crazy.

Grand Central Terminal in 1913

After renovations in the 1980s

The small black speck in the middle of the photograph is the color of the walls and ceiling prior to restoration

Other fun stops on the tour included the Kissing and Whispering Galleries. The first was formerly a waiting room for family and friends of travelers arriving by train. It was coined the “Kissing Gallery” because everyone got a kiss and a hug upon arrival, which meant there were about 60 million kisses per year in that small room alone! Today the closest thing we saw to a kiss was a Valentine’s Day card for sale in one of the small shops that currently fill the room. There is also an area near Oyster Bar, the oldest and highly acclaimed restaurant in the terminal, called the Whispering Gallery. It was unintentionally designed so that two people at opposite ends of the space can whisper into the wall and hear one another. The Guastavino tile that creates this effect is also present in the Oyster Bar restaurant, so the guide warned that any secrets shared between friends could also likely be heard by nearby diners.

The famous Oyster Bar Restaurant, right next to the Whispering Gallery

There was at one time a private apartment located inside the terminal. It was constructed by John Campbell in a 13^th century Florentine design. The 1920’s banker, in explaining his motivation for building his lavish crib, said he simply wanted a place to impress his friends. Interesting! Mr. Campbell’s apartment became the police headquarters (Grand Central is large enough to have its own precinct) after his death, and has since been renovated and turned into a plush, romantic cocktail lounge.

The tour was an hour and a half long, so I won’t cover everything else, but here are a few more interesting facts.

• Grand Central Terminal sees 500,000 – 700,000 travelers come through its doors… every day!
• There are two eagle statues (we only saw one) that were saved from the original train station, which was built in the mid to late 1800’s.
• The main statue over the face of the building is over five feet stories tall and the three gods represent intelligence, strength, and commerce.
• All of the light bulbs in the terminal are completely exposed. At the time of the building’s construction, electricity was a fancy, new technology, so the architects wanted to show it off to the world.
• Also interestingly, the bulbs are all compact fluorescents to save on energy costs. Traditional fluorescent bulbs have twisting glass, so the bulbs in Grand Central had to be specially manufactured to fit its early 20^th century look.
• The large light fixtures are called electroliers (instead of chandelier) and are electronically raised and lowered when a bulb (also exposed) needs changing. They are plated with gold and nickel.  
• It costs around $60,000 to clean all of the windows.
• Grand Central is contiguous with over 33 surrounding buildings via underground tunnels.
• Grand Central is not a “station” – it’s a terminal, implying that it is your final destination. The only stations in Grand Central are the Post Office and the subway lines. Our guide mentioned this about 6 times, so it must be important.

Electroliers 

If you’re still with me after all of that, congrats! You now know more than you probably wanted to about Grand Central. Hopefully I can take more tours of historic parts of the city and provide you with more in-depth reports! Stay tuned, and have a great day.

Approved

The board approved the sublet! We aren't sure when we'll be moving in yet, but hopefully around February 1st (or as soon as the woman who owns the apartment can get her stuff together to leave). In the meantime, we'll be staying in another hotel near Time Square. It's kind of nice being so close to all of the hustle and bustle, but things are a bit expensive in this area. We will be looking forward to settling in and having a fridge so we can buy groceries!

View from the Wellington hotel

It snowed a few inches on Saturday, which was beautiful on the tops of buildings, but immediately turned to slush on the streets. I guess gray snow is still better than yellow or brown snow?

Snowy view from the Wellington hotel

We do really like being so close to Central Park, both for the scenery and for the people. We met a man named Leaf a few days ago who told us some jokes as well as his thoughts on life. One was: why did the skeleton woman go to the movies alone? Ans: she had no-body to go with! Leaf was a character to say the least, but seemed to really be loving life. And that's what's important, right?

Southern Central Park, where Leaf lives

I hope you have a great day!

A Welcome Visit

Hello family and friends! We have a lot of great updates to share with you as a lot has happened in the past week or so. Last Friday Casey had an interview with a hedge fund called Glenview Capital – things went well and they ended up offering him a position by the end of the day! He will be starting next week already and is really looking forward to it. The position is a 10 week internship with the assumption that as long as he does well it will turn into a full time job. He’ll be doing equity research in the technology sector, which I’m hoping translates into him being able to explain how my latest gadgets work. He really likes the people he’ll be working with too, which I think is almost as important as what he’ll actually be doing.

In other news, we heard from the board of the co-op that our interview will be held this Thursday evening. That means we should have a final decision by sometime early next week! Hopefully the interview is just a formality, but I’m still a little nervous about it. The woman we are subleasing from said to wear a full suit to the interview. It sounds like a bit much to me, but I suppose wearing a suit translates into us being responsible adults who aren’t involved in any shady business. At this point I think I’d wear a gorilla suit if it raised our chances of getting the apartment.

For our first night in the city, Casey and I strolled around Rockefeller Center, which was unexpectedly deserted. Out of all the TV shows and movies that have filmed scenes in that area, I had never seen a shot depicting what we saw last night: not a soul around. It was kind of nice. The ice skating rink was bare and glistening, and while the big Christmas tree had already been taken down, the remaining trees were lit up and sparkling blue. It was cold and drizzly out (the type of weather to which I normally object) but I think it deterred the other would-be late night wanderers from venturing out, leaving Casey and I to ourselves. We ended the night by ordering some awful Chinese food that had been sitting under a heat lamp for no less than four hours, along with mint gelato (sold at the same fine dining establishment), and headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday morning we got a slow start to the day – Casey is trying to enjoy his last week of freedom – and finally made it out for lunch at Chipotle. After eating we walked over to Casey’s soon-to-be office, and then walked up Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum (“the Met”). The place is huge, so we picked a few sections that we thought would be interesting: Grecian, Roman, Egyptian, and American art and artifacts, and weapons and armaments. That’s right, there’s an entire section completely devoted to the armor, swords, and ensembles worn by soldiers of years past from all over the world. As a lady, I of course liked browsing through ancient jewelry and décor, but I couldn’t help my fascination with the battlefield accessories. We probably didn’t even get through one sixth of the Met and will definitely have to return to check out the rest.

Knights in armor at the Met

For dinner we tried a small little Thai place called Chai Restaurant. Casey ordered a curry soup and I had their pad thai, both of which were excellent. The restaurant was very cozy and had a romantic atmosphere. It was crazy how close together all of the tables were to one another! I felt kind of bad having to slide my rear end across another guest’s table as I left, but didn’t have much choice. I guess that arrangement is pretty common here. I think it actually gives the restaurants a little extra charm.

Well folks, that’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in – more to come soon! 

One Way Ticket

Hello friends and family, welcome to my very first blog post! Casey and I have a lot of big changes coming up and I wanted to keep everyone in the loop with what is happening. I also want to give everyone a close up view of New York - from its culture to its food to its night life and more - all of the adventures that we will have. But before I get into that, I just wanted to express how grateful I am to have spent time with all of our family during this holiday season. It may be a few years before that can happen again, and I feel so blessed to have had that opportunity. I also want to extend a warm welcome to everyone to come visit us anytime! We would be happy to have you stay with us, if you don't mind a little "efficiency" :-)

On to the updates. We have sold both of our cars in preparation for moving to the city. I have heard people say that people sell parking spots like they sell real estate in New York, so we figured being car-less would be a good first step. The public transportation there is great and will be a fun way to get around the city. I'm actually really excited about not driving for the next few years, but am a little curious to see if I can retain the skills when I start driving again. Casey says that I can't get much worse than I am now, but I think I can prove him wrong! For now since we sold both of our vehicles, we have been driving around in Marvin's [Casey's dad] old farm pickup. Like any farm pickup it has its quirks - it almost has its own personality - but it gets the job done.

Also we found an apartment on the upper east side and have submitted an application to sublease it. The building is a co-op, so all of the tenants own a part of the building. For us, that means we actually have to interview (in person) with the board of the co-op before we are allowed to sublease the apartment. Our application was officially complete yesterday, and now we're just waiting to hear when our interview date will be set. Just looking at Google Maps, we've already picked out restaurants we want to try if we end up getting this apartment... and I've picked out all of the stores I want to check out as well! I will be mostly window shopping I suspect, considering how fancy everything looks, but I'm excited nonetheless.

A few weeks ago (right before Christmas) I found out that I was accepted to Cornell Medical College, so I know what I'll be doing for the next four years! Classes don't start until the fall, which gives me plenty of time to explore the area and learn how to use the buses and subway system. The school and affiliated hospitals are actually located in Manhattan, not in Ithaca, which I was happy about since that's where we'll be living. But I am hoping we can travel to upstate New York sometime - I hear it's beautiful up there.

And last of all, we purchased one-way tickets to New York! Casey is going there a few days ahead of me to attend a reunion of a trip he went on a few years ago while I finish up packing and boxing our stuff. If we get the apartment, it is (fortunately!) furnished so we will not be shipping any big items. It even has a TV, so we sold ours on Craigslist a few days ago.

Casey and I are both so excited to move out there, and I will continue to post updates as they happen. Be on the lookout for pictures of the area after we move! We love you all!