Description
Grand Central Terminal is New York's great railway station, at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Opened in 1913, it is a Beaux-Arts landmark with a famous Main Concourse, and a place to see even if you are not catching a train.
Start in the Main Concourse, under a vault of turquoise with golden stars, where commuters hurry past the four-faced clock on the information booth, the terminal's best-known icon. Twin staircases rise at the sides, modeled on those of the Paris Opera.
Down by the Oyster Bar is the whispering gallery: a whisper in one corner is heard in the opposite one. Around the concourse there are also restaurants, bars, a food hall and shops, so the station is a destination in itself.
It is also one of the busiest places in the city: during the morning rush hour a train arrives every 58 seconds, and 21.6 million people visited in 2018, not counting train and subway passengers.
The sky is wrong. On the vault more than 2,500 stars shine in gold, but many constellations are reversed left to right. A commuter pointed it out in 1913, the year it opened, and in more than a century of restorations nobody has fixed it.
The New York Central Railroad built the station from 1903, to outshine Penn Station, which its rival was raising on the West Side. Over 10,000 workers dug up to ten floors deep, and it opened on February 2, 1913, with electric trains.
Its peak came in 1947, with 65 million travelers. Then came jets and highways. In 1968 the railroad proposed replacing the station with a skyscraper, just as the original Penn Station had been torn down in 1963.
The city said no, and the fight went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled for the city. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis helped save it, and the main entrance now bears her name. In the 1990s a restoration removed the advertisements and cleaned the ceiling, bringing its sky back to light.
Don't miss
• The Main Concourse and its ceiling.
• The four-faced clock.
• The whispering gallery.
• The twin staircases.
Did you know?
• Grand Central has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world.
• The clock faces are often said to be opal worth millions: an urban legend, since they are opalescent glass.
• The "T" in the GCT monogram is shaped like an upside-down anchor, a nod to Cornelius Vanderbilt's start in ferries.
Start in the Main Concourse, under a vault of turquoise with golden stars, where commuters hurry past the four-faced clock on the information booth, the terminal's best-known icon. Twin staircases rise at the sides, modeled on those of the Paris Opera.
Down by the Oyster Bar is the whispering gallery: a whisper in one corner is heard in the opposite one. Around the concourse there are also restaurants, bars, a food hall and shops, so the station is a destination in itself.
It is also one of the busiest places in the city: during the morning rush hour a train arrives every 58 seconds, and 21.6 million people visited in 2018, not counting train and subway passengers.
The sky is wrong. On the vault more than 2,500 stars shine in gold, but many constellations are reversed left to right. A commuter pointed it out in 1913, the year it opened, and in more than a century of restorations nobody has fixed it.
The New York Central Railroad built the station from 1903, to outshine Penn Station, which its rival was raising on the West Side. Over 10,000 workers dug up to ten floors deep, and it opened on February 2, 1913, with electric trains.
Its peak came in 1947, with 65 million travelers. Then came jets and highways. In 1968 the railroad proposed replacing the station with a skyscraper, just as the original Penn Station had been torn down in 1963.
The city said no, and the fight went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled for the city. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis helped save it, and the main entrance now bears her name. In the 1990s a restoration removed the advertisements and cleaned the ceiling, bringing its sky back to light.
Don't miss
• The Main Concourse and its ceiling.
• The four-faced clock.
• The whispering gallery.
• The twin staircases.
Did you know?
• Grand Central has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world.
• The clock faces are often said to be opal worth millions: an urban legend, since they are opalescent glass.
• The "T" in the GCT monogram is shaped like an upside-down anchor, a nod to Cornelius Vanderbilt's start in ferries.