58. 31. This article was most recently revised and updated by, Official Site of the Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, United States, Columbia University - Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, United States. On Dec. 12, 1901, a little less than a month before the Park Avenue Tunnel crash, Alexander Cassatt, the Pennsylvania’s president, announced that the railroad would bore under the river and run trains to a grand station of its own, to be built on two square blocks bounded by 31st and 33rd Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Beneath the 770-foot-wide valley he created in Midtown Manhattan, Wilgus dug a six-foot-diameter drainage sewer about 65 feet deep that ran half a mile to the East River. It was the last to depart from the old station. Renovations in the 90's required that the original Tennessee marble quarry be reopened to build a staircase on the east side of the concourse that would match that on the west side. Wilgus was asking the railroad’s directors to accept a great deal on faith. A gem of the Beaux-Arts style, the terminal looks as though it could have been transported from 1870s France. To Wilgus’s dismay, the Warren & Wetmore version eliminated the revenue-generating office and hotel tower atop the terminal. 36. 88. Because a bucket of sand thrown into the super-hot rotary would have turned to glass and halted trains. 62. The maze of tracks and trains was commanded from a four-story switch-and-signal tower south of 50th Street. Construction would take fully 10 years, and by the time it was barely halfway finished, Wilgus would be gone and his guess as to the cost of the project would have doubled, to about $2 billion in today’s dollars. Workers restored a sculpture atop the building in 1980. The sub-basement (known as M42) housed rotary power converters targeted by the Axis in WWII. On June 5, 1910, the Owl, as the midnight train was known, left Grand Central Station for Boston. An East Side Access project is underway to bring Long Island Railroad to GCT by 2019. By Jan. 10, 1903, the Central’s board of directors had embraced the project and promoted him. The departures are always listed as one minute earlier than their actual time. Electricity required less maintenance. His sole assignment: to manage the homeless population there. In 1903, the Central invited the nation’s leading architects to submit designs for the new terminal. Why invest so much in a project that benefited only passengers? Also: a Newsweek clock, whose face read “Nobody gets you into the news like Newsweek.”. 23. Their mean household income is $95,800. Building History. William Wilgus was an engineer, not an architect, but he hoped to impose his own aesthetic on the new terminal. The firm began with two big advantages. 15. 79. 68. Daily What?! Instead, “walking encyclopedias” in gray frock coats and white caps were available. And a 10-cent shoeshine (better leave a nice tip). 35. As many as 50 painters under Basing’s direction worked to ensure that there was no variation in color tone. 1. Movies and TV shows have regularly featured Grand Central scenes over the decades, from North by Northwest... 91. 8. To Mad Men’s Pete Campbell, who complains in 1967 that commuting from GCT to Cos Cob is like “an epic poem,” the trip took about an hour and cost less than three dollars. Grand Central Terminal in New York City was built in 1913 and is the largest train station in the world, complete with a rich history—including the demolition of the first structure built in 1871—and plenty of secrets.