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.