Grand Central Terminal (often colloquially called Grand Central
Station) is a train station in Manhattan in New York, United
States. It is on the corner of 42nd Street and Park Avenue. It
is where the Metro North commuter trains from Westchester
County, Putnam County, Dutchess County, Fairfield County and New
Haven County terminate. Opened in 2023, Grand Central Madison
underground station section features Long Island Rail Road
trains.
Grand Central Terminal was inaugurated as a
terminus on February 2, 1913 and has since become the station
with the most platforms in the world – its 67 tracks terminate
at 44 platforms. The multi-level station is on two levels with
41 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower level. The
naming does not result from a central station function, but is
based on the New York Central Railroad, which was responsible
for the construction and owned the railway company for many
years.
In January 1975, Grand Central Terminal was listed
on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a
National Historic Landmark in December 1976. On February 1,
2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers added the
structure to its list of historic civil engineering landmarks to
mark its centenary.
Three buildings that served the same function had previously stood on
the same spot:
Grand Central Depot
Completed in 1871, Grand
Central Depot was designed to consolidate trains on the New York Central
and Hudson River Railroad, Harlem River Railroad, and New Haven Railroad
into a common station. The main building, which, in addition to
passenger functions, also housed the offices of the railway companies,
was shaped like the letter L. The platform hall to the north and east of
the main building featured two innovations that were unusual for the
American continent at the time: the platforms were raised to the height
of the carriages, and a vaulted roof spanned all the tracks.
Grand Central Station
The main building was extensively redesigned
between 1899 and 1900: it was increased from three to six floors and
given a new facade. Only the track hall remained in its original form.
The tracks that had previously reached south to 42nd Street were
shortened and the track layout was redesigned to reduce train congestion
and improve turnaround times. The remodeled building was renamed Grand
Central Station in 1900.
Grand Central Terminal
Between 1903
and 1913, the entire building was demolished in sections and replaced by
the current multi-story Grand Central Terminal. Architectural firms
Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stem redesigned it in the Beaux-Arts style.
At the same time as the new station building was being built, the three
railway lines that ended there were electrified.
“Recently, after
ten years of uninterrupted work, the new central train station in New
York was opened, the largest in the whole world. In order to make this
enormous, impressive work possible - it covers an area of 31 hectares
and cost the fabulous sum of 900 million - an entire district of the
American metropolis had to be demolished. […] The new station building
is only two stories high, one of which is underground and the other is
at street level. 68 rail tracks run through these two floors in a
strictly parallel direction, made of 53½ kilometers of rails and
calculated for the traffic of more than 1000 trains a day. […] This
colossal, intricate network of rails, which required three million cubic
yards of stone to support, is under the control of a single central
signal house […]. This signal house, which is four stories high,
represents a true marvel of ingenious machinery. [...] Despite these
gigantic dimensions, the 'Grand Central Terminal' is not without a
certain architectural beauty, namely in its main facade, whose central
wing is in the form of a triumphal arch of mighty Proportions half
Doric, half Renaissance style. The strict regularity of the lines is
softened by ornaments that are as simple as they are elegant. The whole
thing not only makes an imposing, but also an artistic impression.”
–
Report in the Reichspost of July 25, 1913
The gigantic railroad
cathedral quickly became one of the most recognizable buildings in New
York. More than 500,000 people use the train station every day, making
it the most visited building in the city. Worth seeing is the large main
hall with the dark blue-green painted ceiling as a starry sky. This is
the work of Paul César Helleu, who designed the Zodiac with the advice
of astronomy professor Harold Jacoby. Jacoby provided Johann Bayer's map
Uranometria with the template for the draft, which Helleu freely
interpreted, which led to a controversy in the New York Times after the
opening, after an amateur astronomer had publicized the mistakes.
Australian Charles Basing directed the work on the ceiling. The work was
restored in 1945 and around 1995, with the work from 1945 being directed
by Basing's pupil Charles Gulbrandsen. Also worth seeing is the central
kiosk with four clocks.
In 1968, plans were announced to demolish
the building in order to be able to build more high-rise buildings on
this site. It was argued that the property was worth more than the
building itself. However, by order of the US Supreme Court in 1978 (the
case is known as "Penn Central Transportation Co. vs. New York City"),
it was preserved and subsequently renovated .
Penn Central
Corporation (since 1994 trading as American Premier Underwriters) has
long owned the building and access road sections, as well as the
development rights, which leased it to the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority. In late fall 2006, the properties were sold to Midtown TDR
Ventures along with the existing lease, which expired in 2274. On
November 13, 2018, the MTA agreed to purchase the station and access
routes (Harlem Line and Hudson Line) for $35 million.
With the
founding of Amtrak, which had taken over almost all long-distance
traffic in the USA from the private rail companies in 1971, the first
long-distance trains from New Haven and Boston were withdrawn from the
station. Only the Empire Service trains through Upstate New York to
Niagara Falls and some New England states and Canada remained. With the
construction of a new access route to New York's Penn Station, Grand
Central Terminal also lost the remaining long-distance trains in 1991,
so that this station is now only used by local and regional trains. For
three lines of the Metro-North Railroad, Grand Central Terminal is the
southern terminus and by far the most important connection point to
inner-city transportation, particularly the subway, and the Long Island
Rail Road.
In 1976 a bomb was hidden in the train station.
Croatian nationalists under Zvonko Bušić had hijacked a plane and
planted a bomb in one of the lockers. After their demands were met, they
gave up the hiding place. The police recovered the bomb. An attempt to
defuse the explosive device at a firing range resulted in an explosion,
killing a bomb disposal operator.
Platforms
With 44 platforms, the station has the most in number in
the world. In 2016, 67 tracks were in regular service for passenger
traffic. The upper level has 42 tracks, including 10 tracks used only
for parking vehicles. A track here forms a terminal loop around forty of
the platforms of the terminus station. The lower level has 27 tracks
surrounded by multiple terminal loops.
The Hotel Waldorf-Astoria
has its own platform (#61) in Grand Central Terminal. It was already
included in the construction plans and was mentioned in the New York
Times as early as 1929. A separate elevator and an underground passage
for hotel guests lead to this platform; even cars can use it. The
platform was used e.g. first by General Pershing in 1938, as well as by
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adlai Ewing Stevenson, and Douglas MacArthur.
Grand Central Madison
Opened January 25, 2023, Grand Central
Madison is an eight-track underground terminus for the Long Island Rail
Road. Until the opening of Grand Central Madison, the Long Island Rail
Road only connected directly from eastern Long Island to Manhattan at
Penn Station, which is accessed through the East River Tunnels.
The East Side Access project provided the first connection between Grand
Central Terminal and the mainline of the Long Island Rail Road with new
rail tunnels. The construction of the new part of the station began in
2008. For crossing the East River, the trains use the lower level of the
double-decker 63rd Street Tunnel, which was built from 1969 and
initially remained unused after completion of the shell in the 1970s.
While the upper level has been used by subways since 1989, the first
contracts for the expansion of the lower level of the tunnel as part of
East Side Access were awarded in 2006.
Because East Side Access
was drilled below subway level, the platforms are the third and fourth
levels below the previous facilities. There are no track connections
with the Metro-North Railroad. The platform tracks are numbered 201 to
204 on the two upper levels and 301 to 304 on the two lower levels. Two
tracks are located on a central platform in a trough. Two platforms are
located one above the other, with a mezzanine in between, which extends
along the entire length of the platform. Below 45th through 48th
Streets, there are connections between the mezzanines and the Madison
Concourse in the Madison Avenue area, which can be used to access
surface, subway, and Grand Central Terminal. For the construction of the
new underground station, the former platforms 116-125 in the lower level
of Grand Central Terminal were demolished.
The station is connected to the Grand Central–42 Street subway station on the New York City Subway. This is where the 42nd Street shuttle to Times Square, lines 7 and <7> on the IRT Flushing Line, and lines 4, 5, 6, and <6> on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line stop.
Countless feature films have been filmed or are set in Grand Central.
Including e.g. B.: Unfaithful, The Avengers, The Bone Hunter,
Armageddon, Carlito's Way, Cloverfield, The Cotton Club, Freshman, I Am
Legend, Madagascar, Midnight Run, Spider-Man: Far From Home, The
Invisible Third Party, Stop the U's Death Ride - Lane 123, Hackers - In
the FBI Net, Friends with Benefits, Mr. Nobody, Ghostbusters, Fisher
King and Unbreakable, as well as the Quantico and Gossip Girl series.
On a Saturday afternoon in winter 2007/08, 207 people in the hall
froze for five minutes at the same time for the flash mob classic Frozen
Grand Central. The video, posted on YouTube on January 31, 2008, has
been viewed 36 million times.