Saving Grand Central

Volume 13 • Number 4 SPRING 2014 $4.95 ALSO INSIDE: Preserving an Icon Invisible at Tiffany's The Evils of Libraries Turning On in Millbrook Insanity Defined 12 SSAAVVIINNGG BY SAM ROBERTS The main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, ca. 1903, fades into a color image of the terminal’s present-day ceiling. NEW YORK archives • SPRING 2014 13 SSAAV GG VIINN COLOR IMAGE: COURTESY OF FRANK ENGLISH Though the Manhattan terminal still holds a high place in the American cultural imagination, history shows that Grand Central Station was often an icon in search of a patron. t is the place where duced, including the harness- Standard Time was ing of electricity for rail travel HISTORIC IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS born in 1883, where and the use of ramps instead the organized labor of stairs to help baggage-tot- and civil rights ing passengers. Although, as movements were nurtured The New York Times carped, by A. Philip Randolph’s Grand Central Station was Brotherhood of Sleeping Car neither grand nor central, it Porters, where air rights were shifted Manhattan’s cultural first invoked on a grand scale center of gravity to midtown. in real property law and And it helped create on Park development, where the prin- Avenue what historian Mike ciple of landmarks preserva- Wallace has described as the tion was affirmed, and where first permanent haven for the major architectural and plan- rich in Manhattan, who had ning innovations were intro- been routed from Washington and Union Squares by development pressures. The Beaux Arts terminal, designed in 1903 by the New CAROL M. HIGHSMITH’S AMERICA, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF LIBRARY AMERICA, HIGHSMITH’S M. CAROL York Central Railroad’s vision- ary engineer William J. Wilgus, became one of the most recognized buildings in New York and a popular cultural icon, appearing as the setting of an eponymous weekly radio program from the 1930s to the 1950s and making cameo appearances in films and television. But since then, Grand Central has struggled Right: Grand Central’s ornate façade has become iconic. www.nysarchivestrust.org 14 COURTESY OF FRANK ENGLISH LIBRARY OF CONGRESS to survive. The first attempt to prosecuted the Rosenberg destroy it was in 1954, when atomic spy case) ruled in the the railroad wanted to erect railroad’s favor, minimizing an office building in place of the architectural and cultural the station to maximize its air value of the terminal as “a the Temple of Dendur, which children?” After wavering, space. This proposal met with long-neglected faded beauty.” now resides in the Metropolitan the mayor was persuaded to strong resistance from various Threatened with civil damages Museum of Art (she was pursue an appeal, which New York organizations, and and faced with a severe fiscal known to call the museum to wended its way through the it was quashed. Preservation- crisis, the city tottered on have the temple illuminated state courts and ultimately to ists continued to work to the brink of letting Saypol’s at night, to delight her dinner the U.S. Supreme Court. Ruling create a New York City decision stand. City lawyers guests). Thus she brought in the city’s favor in 1978, the Landmarks Law and protect themselves were ambivalent. both historic preservation Supreme Court saved Grand Grand Central with landmark But in the meantime, Grand experience and clout to the Central by upholding a status, which was achieved in Central had gained a power- fight to preserve Grand Central. municipality’s right to preserve 1965. However, the new ful advocate: Jacqueline When Mrs. Kennedy (by historically valuable properties; owner, Penn Central, got the Kennedy Onassis. then Mrs. Onassis) read in The denying the railroad’s applica- landmark status overturned in She had been intimately New York Times of an effort tion to deface the terminal City Court that same year, and involved in historic preservation to galvanize civic leaders and with a skyscraper on top, said it seemed inevitable that the as First Lady. In fact, when arts patrons on behalf of Grand the Court, did not constitute building would be destroyed. the Kennedy Administration Central, she was inspired to an indefensible taking of Years of legal wrangling helped finance the building of send a handwritten letter to private property. Thus Grand ensued. Penn Central sued the the Aswan High Dam in Egypt Mayor Abraham D. Beame. Central, as architecture critic state, arguing that the city was in 1963, the Egyptian govern- “Is it not cruel,” she wrote, Paul Goldberger has claimed, depriving it of income from ment offered to give the “to let our city die by degrees, became the “poster building” the proposed skyscraper and United States one of the stripped of her proud monu- for landmark preservation–– causing economic hardship. In cultural icons that would have ments, until there will be but only after its supporters 1975, New York Supreme been destroyed in that con- nothing left of all her history had rallied popular and Court Justice Irving Saypol (who struction. Mrs. Kennedy chose and beauty to inspire our political opinion to pursue the NEW YORK archives • SPRING 2014 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 15 Upper, far left: Grand Central’s main concourse THE ARCHIVES after refurbishment. CONNECTION Upper, left: Street view, c. 1927. Lower, left: Main concourse, 1941. rchival sources used for Lower, middle: Main waiting room, 1910–20. Amy book, Grand Lower, right: The famous clock in the main concourse. Central: How a Train Station Transformed America, include letters and documents from the New York serving the building, and Central Railroad, William J. Stangl began to create a con- Wilgus, and others, which stituency for a restoration are held in the collections of that would ultimately cost the New York Public Library, over $100 million. the New-York Historical Stangl’s vision, and a joint COURTESY OF FRANK ENGLISH Society, the Williamson partnership of public and pri- Library of the New York vate funders, has produced a Railroad Enthusiasts, the Grand Central that today is New York Transit Museum, even grander than the origi- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS and the New York Central nal, although it serves a very System Historical Society, different constituency in a whose website can be very different city than when accessed at http://nycshs. legitimate expense be spared it opened over a century ago. org. Other documents relat- to salvage the aging terminal It remains to be seen whether ed to the history of Grand and make it into a shrine to Grand Central will continue Central are held by the New appeal in the first place. what government at its most to struggle for its existence, York City Landmarks For a time, the victory enlightened could accomplish. or whether it will finally be Preservation Commission seemed pyrrhic. By the 1980s Stangl began by counterin- accepted as a permanent fix- and the Metropolitan the terminal was a wreck, and tuitively removing a source ture in the pantheon of New Transportation Authority. there was neither money nor of revenue: the giant Kodak York’s iconic buildings. n much of a constituency to Colorama, the world’s largest restore it. The roof leaked; photo transparency. Though homeless people camped in today it might be considered the main waiting room; “mole” a landmark rather than an people lived in the labyrinthine advertising eyesore, it was tunnels below. Commuters emblematic of the commer- couldn’t wait to get on a train cialism that had invaded the or escape to the street. Then terminal. Once the light, air, COURTESY OF FRANK ENGLISH in 1983, Peter Stangl, a former and traffic flow were unblocked college economics teacher and the terminal’s windows from Connecticut, became the were revealed, workers began first president of the Metro- scraping the skylights that North Commuter Railroad–– had been painted over since and he was committed to the blackouts of World War II transforming the decrepit and restoring the 25,000- hulk of the once-majestic square-foot celestial ceiling. Grand Central into a first-class With each improvement, transportation hub and desti- more and more New Yorkers nation. He insisted that no became committed to pre- The Park Avenue viaduct allows traffic to flow around Grand Central. www.nysarchivestrust.org.

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