Grand Central Terminal

A friend and I were in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal recently, and as we paused to admire the soaring space, he wondered aloud why the ceiling is so incredibly high.  This is a good question.  An architect would probably have an answer that explains the powerful effect of the massive room's proportions (470 feet long x 160 feet wide x 150 feet high), and that's certainly literally the reason.  But the underlying reason the space is so grand (indeed!) is the rivalry between two railroads, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central, in the Gilded Age.  I learned some of the history in Lorraine Diehl's The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996) and Jill Jonnes' Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels (Penguin, 2007), both of which I recommend. 

attribution: Grand Central by Muhammad on flickr, from Wikimedia Commons

licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

In our diminished era of Amtrak and Conrail, it's not easy to imagine just how enormous and powerful the railroads were more than a century ago.  Today, our airlines aren't as dominant, and they keep cycling through the bankruptcy courts.  Maybe a closer analogy would be Microsoft and Google.  In the 19th century, the railroads had cutting edge technology.  They were the preeminent business enterprises of a rapidly expanding country, their business methods and practices were highly sophisticated, and they engaged the energies of the most talented men of the age.  The results are still with us today in the form of modern corporations, regulatory structures, and the commercial law itself that was greatly developed by railroad lawyers nationwide (including Abraham Lincoln).

Beginning in the mid 19th century, Commodore Vanderbilt combined several railroads to form the New York Central, and in 1869-71 built the largest railway station in the world at 42nd Street, known as the Grand Central Depot.  At the beginning of the 20th century, the New York Central was still the only railroad that had direct access to Manhattan--it came down the east side of the Hudson from upstate, crossed the Harlem River, and made its way south on tracks over which Park Avenue now runs.  But the Pennsylvania and nine other railroads stopped on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River and transported passengers to Manhattan on ferries. 

Alexander Cassatt, a Philadelphian viewed by his contemporaries as a brilliant railroad man but today much less well known than his sister the painter Mary Cassatt, had come out of retirement in 1899 to head the Pennsylvania Railroad.  He was determined to cross the Hudson and build a terminal in Manhattan.  At first the idea was to build an enormous bridge to be shared by multiple railroads, but the other railroads ultimately balked.  New technology presented an alternative:  in Paris, Cassatt visited the brand new Gare du Quai D'Orsay where powerful electric locomotives pulled heavy passenger trains.  Cassatt realized that electric traction might allow the Pennsylvania to cross the Hudson in tunnels.   The soft mud in the river bed would present severe technological challenges, but the tunnel plan succeeded--the same tunnels are in use today more than 100 years later.  (Incidentally, the Gare du Quai D'Orsay is now the Musee D'Orsay, where Mary Cassatt's work hangs with that of other impressionists.) 

The Pennsylvania secretly acquired four square blocks in the infamous "Tenderloin," a rundown and vice-infested district, and in December 1901 announced its plans for the "New York Tunnels and Terminal Extension" consisting of tunnels crossing the Hudson and East rivers and a gigantic terminal.  The financial, political and technological challenges involved were immense as well, but that's another story.

Cassatt chose Charles McKim, head of the preeminent firm McKim, Mead and White, to design a monumental station in the neoclassical style.  Pennsylvania Station opened in 1910.  Inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, the station's general waiting room was the largest room in the world--two full city blocks long and 150 feet high.  

The magnificent train shed, below,  echoed the famous Crystal Palace:

Cassatt's ambitious plans for Pennsylvania Station spurred the Vanderbilts to build  the present Grand Central Terminal as a comparably monumental replacement for the Grand Central Depot.  This was shortly after a disastrous steam engine accident in the smoke-filled Park Avenue tunnel killed 17 people and injured 38 in 1902, leading  to calls to electrify the railway and passage of  legislation  that would outlaw steam engines within Manhattan beginning in 1910.  McKim, Mead and White lost the architectural competition to Reed and Stern, which was responsible for the overall design, including the advanced circulation system of ramps (see below).  The Vanderbilts then added Warren and Wetmore (the firm of Vanderbilt cousin Whitney Warren) as architects for the terminal's aesthetic details in the Beaux Arts style.  The terminal opened in 1913. 

Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com

licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

We are indebted to the Pennsylvania Railroad in one final respect for Grand Central Terminal today.   Despite having been built for the ages, Pennsylvania Station lasted barely fifty years.  It was demolished in 1963 and replaced by the Madison Square Garden arena, an undistinguished office building and the banal underground station that now bears the name Penn Station.  The loss awakened public support for preservation and led to establishment of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965 and designation of Grand Central as a landmark in 1967.  The two rival railroads, weakened by decades of decline amidst competition from airlines and interstate highways, merged in 1968 to form Penn Central.  As part of their plan for financial salvation, they proposed to build a 55 story tower in the airspace above Grand Central.  The Landmarks Commission rejected the proposal and Penn Central sued the city, ultimately losing at the US Supreme Court in 1978.   Grand Central Terminal was saved.  Metro-North took over operation of the Terminal on a long term basis in 1994 and has since renovated it beautifully. 

attribution: NYC Grand Central Terminal ceiling by Arnoldius on Wikimedia Commons

licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license