Friday, was our day to explore Grand Central Terminal. To facilitate our exploration, we decided to take a free walking tour that is sponsored by the area business association. Our wonderful tour guide was Peter Laskowich, (newyorkdynamic.com) who believes that buildings tell us things -- a man this country mouse could relate to. I knew exactly what he was talking about, buildings are always speaking to me. His first lesson in buildings speaking was to take us to two banks in the neighborhood. On one side of the street, there was a fantastic old building with columns and marble and all things gorgeous and grand. Across the street was a very modern all glass building (didn't say much to me). The comparison, back in the early 1900s, when the first was built, it was saying, look how strong and secure I am, you can feel confident placing your money here. The newer building, built after the 1990s, is saying, look, I am transparent, you can see everything I'm doing, your money will be safe here. (We can even see such examples in the country.)
Grand Central Terminal was built in response to two very bad accidents, in which steam boilers exploded, sending shrapnel flying and killing multiple people. In response, the city leaders said no more steam railroads in the city. Railroad officials, in turn, had the brilliant idea to electrify the trains, lower the tracks and build on top a building in the grand European style that everyone would want to come to. And that's exactly what they did. The idea was so successful that a whole neighborhood was built around this terminal in the same style and texture as the railroad station and came to be known as Terminal City. Today, sadly, 95% of the Terminal City buildings have been destroyed. There are a few still around, and as you might imagine, they are in the same style, etc. as Grand Central.
It seems that every inch of this "grand" project was carefully considered and designed. We entered the terminal from Lexington Avenue. As you enter, the ceilings are low and the hallway more narrow. Proceeding up a slight incline the ceilings gradually become taller and the hall widens finally spewing you out into the main concourse which is high and grand and gorgeous. The Lexington Avenue entrance was designed to appeal to your spiritual being, because as you enter, the only other thing as grand as this would be houses of worship. Interestingly, if you look back from where you came, you can see the ceilings becoming lower and the hallway more narrow. This is designed to speed you up, because even without realizing, as your passageway becomes smaller, you will want to get out.
In the grand concourse, after the building was cleaned in the 1990s, if you look up in one corner, you will see a small rectangle that was left untouched so that you can see what the ceiling looked like from years of dust, dirt, cigarette smoke, etc.
Another interesting concept was that the commuter trains and the long-distance trains were on separate levels, thereby keeping the two away from each other. Of course, the commuters were always in a hurry and knew exactly where they wanted to go; whereas, the people that were arriving on the long-distance trains had sometimes spent up to three nights on a train and were tired, sluggish and didn't always know where they were going. This provided the people coming into New York from elsewhere a more welcoming New York because they weren't thrust in with the commuters who were in a hurry and had no patience with people not in the same hurry.
A little more on the long-distance tracks. There were only five gates for incoming trains and multiple gates for outgoing trains. Why would you have only a few coming in and so many going out you say. Well, every five or ten minutes all day long, a train entered the station and unloaded. It then went around, was cleaned and prepared for its next outgoing trip. In this way, you only had to have five incoming gates because you just had to unload the people and then move the train elsewhere to be prepared for its next trip. Loading the train took much longer, thus the many outgoing gates.
After our tour, Kelsey and I went to the main dining concourse and surveyed all our options, finally settling on a sit-down Mexican meal. From our table, overlooking the "food court," we were able to people-watch and dine at the same time -- what a fine way to end our time at Grand Central Terminal.
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| Grand Concourse |
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| Clock in center of Grand Concourse |
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| Look closely underneath the Crab on the ceiling and the molding for the small black rectangle Below is a closeup of that patch that was left after cleaning in the 1990s |
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| These two chandeliers remind me of earrings |
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| Notice the NYC engraving on the spoon handle |
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