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On October 19, 1862, the roundhouse complex was burned by Confederate troops under Colonel Jackson.
In 1866, the B&O began reconstruction of the site. From 1866 to 1872, the present roundhouse complex was re-built. Other major buildings that were built at this time were the West Roundhouse, East Roundhouse, Bridge & Machine Shop, and the Frog & Switch Shop.
On July 16, 1877, the first nationwide strike, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, began when rail workers at Martinsburg started an action to protest pay cuts. After several unsuccessful attempts to quell the protests, Governor Henry M. Mathews called for federal troops. By the time these troops had restored order, the protest of the rail company had spread across the country.
The Martinsburg shops were used until March 14, 1988, when all local operations were transferred to other locations. On May 14, 1990, vandals set fire to wooden pallets in the East Roundhouse, nearly destroying the building. Only portions of the outer walls remain standing.
The Berkeley County Commission purchased the historic railroad property in February 1999 for $150,000 from CSX Transportation Inc. The property was transferred to the Berkeley County Roundhouse Authority in April 2000. The roundhouse authority, a public, nonprofit corporation was established by an act of the West Virginia Legislature in 1999. Efforts to preserve and redevelop the historic railroad site, which dates to the 1840s, is ongoing, but the buildings are open for public tours and can be rented for special events.
On July 31, 2003, the B&O Roundhouse was designated a National Historic Landmark and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Cheyenne Depot Museum is a railroad museum in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is located inside the historic Union Pacific Railroad depot, built in the 1880s. The depot, a National Historic Landmark, was the railroad's largest station west of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and a major western example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture.
The museum, founded in 1993, interprets Cheyenne's early history and that of the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. It hosts an annual Steam Train Excursion in July, and Depot Days, in which tours are offered of other railroad facilities.
The station is built from blocks of sandstone quarried and transported from Ft. Collins, Colorado. The Depot stands directly down the street from, and facing the, Wyoming State Capitol building, signalling its historic significance in the city and state.
It received major renovations in 1922 to lengthen the building and a redecoration 1929. From 2001 to 2006, another renovation to the depot is being made including a $6.5 million US dollar improvement provided by the City of Cheyenne and plaza built in front of the Depot. This plaza hosts a variety of music and events throughout the year.
Amtrak's "San Francisco Zephyr" ceased serving this station directly in 1979 in favor of a new station in Borie, south of Cheyenne. This eliminated a time-consuming backup move in and out of the station. Passengers were bused between Borie and Cheyenne.
The Old West Museum and Cheyenne Frontier Days made an agreement which established the Cheyenne Depot Museum, Inc. as a 501(c)3 Corporation non-profit organization. The depot is under lease from the city of Cheyenne to this corporation for 25 years.
Grand Central Terminal (GCT; also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as Grand Central) is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Grand Central is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York metropolitan area. It also contains a connection to the New York City Subway at Grand Central–42nd Street station. The terminal is the third-busiest train station in North America, after New York Penn Station and Toronto Union Station.
The distinctive architecture and interior design of Grand Central Terminal's station house have earned it several landmark designations, including as a National Historic Landmark. Its Beaux-Arts design incorporates numerous works of art. Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions, with 21.6 million visitors in 2018, excluding train and subway passengers. The terminal's Main Concourse is often used as a meeting place, and is especially featured in films and television. Grand Central Terminal contains a variety of stores and food vendors, including upscale restaurants and bars, two food halls, and a grocery marketplace.
Grand Central Terminal was built by and named for the New York Central Railroad; it also served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and, later, successors to the New York Central. Opened in 1913, the terminal was built on the site of two similarly-named predecessor stations, the first of which dates to 1871. Grand Central Terminal served intercity trains until 1991, when Amtrak began routing its trains through nearby Penn Station. The East Side Access project, which will bring Long Island Rail Road service to a new station beneath the terminal, is expected to be completed in late 2022.
Grand Central covers and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world. Its platforms, all below ground, serve 30 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower. In total, there are 67 tracks, including a rail yard and sidings; of these, 43 tracks are in use for passenger service, while the remaining two dozen are used to store trains. Another eight tracks and four platforms are being built on two new levels deep underneath the existing station as part of East Side Access.
Grand Central Terminal was named by and for the New York Central Railroad, which built the station and its two predecessors on the site. It has "always been more colloquially and affectionately known as Grand Central Station", the name of its immediate predecessor that operated from 1900 to 1910. The name "Grand Central Station" is also shared with the nearby U.S. Post Office station at 450 Lexington Avenue and, colloquially, with the Grand Central–42nd Street subway station next to the terminal.
Grand Central Terminal serves some 67 million passengers a year, more than any other Metro-North station. At morning rush hour, a train arrives at the terminal every 58 seconds.
Three of Metro-North's five main lines terminate at Grand Central:
Through these lines, the terminal serves Metro-North commuters traveling to and from the Bronx in New York City; Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties in New York; and Fairfield and New Haven counties in Connecticut.
The New York City Subway's adjacent Grand Central–42nd Street station serves the following routes:
These MTA Regional Bus Operations buses stop near Grand Central:
The terminal and its predecessors were designed for intercity service, which operated from the first station building's completion in 1871 until Amtrak ceased operations in the terminal in 1991. Through transfers, passengers could connect to all major lines in the United States, including the "Canadian", the "Empire Builder", the "San Francisco Zephyr", the "Southwest Limited", the "Crescent", and the "Sunset Limited" under Amtrak. Destinations included San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, New Orleans, Chicago, and Montreal. Another notable former train was New York Central's "20th Century Limited", a luxury service that operated to Chicago's LaSalle Street Station between 1902 and 1967 and was among the most famous trains of its time.
From 1971 to 1991, all Amtrak trains using the intrastate Empire Corridor to Niagara Falls terminated at Grand Central; interstate Northeast Corridor trains used Penn Station. Notable Amtrak services at Grand Central included the "Lake Shore", "Empire Service", "Ethan Allen Express", "Adirondack", "Niagara Rainbow", "Maple Leaf", and "Empire State Express".
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to bring Long Island Rail Road commuter trains to a new station beneath Grand Central as part of its East Side Access project. The project will connect the terminal to the railroad's Main Line, which connects to all of the LIRR's branches and almost all of its stations. , service is expected to begin in late 2022.
Grand Central Terminal was designed and built with two main levels for passengers: an upper for intercity trains and a lower for commuter trains. This configuration, devised by New York Central vice president William J. Wilgus, separated intercity and commuter-rail passengers, smoothing the flow of people in and through the station. After intercity service ended in 1991, the upper level was renamed the Main Concourse and the lower the Dining Concourse.
The original plan for Grand Central's interior was designed by Reed and Stem, with some work by Whitney Warren of Warren and Wetmore.
The Main Concourse is located on the upper platform level of Grand Central, in the geographical center of the station building. The concourse leads directly to most of the terminal's upper-level tracks, although some are accessed from passageways near the concourse. The Main Concourse is usually filled with bustling crowds and is often used as a meeting place. At the center of the concourse is an information booth topped with a four-sided brass clock, one of Grand Central's most recognizable icons. The terminal's main departure boards are located at the south end of the space; the boards have been replaced numerous times since their initial installation in 1967.
In their design for the station's interior, Reed & Stem created a circulation system that allowed passengers alighting from trains to enter the Main Concourse, then leave through various passages that branch from it. Among these are the north–south 42nd Street Passage and Shuttle Passage, which run south to 42nd Street; and three east–west passageways — the Grand Central Market, the Graybar Passage, and the Lexington Passage — that run about east to Lexington Avenue by 43rd Street. Several passages run north of the terminal, including the north–south 45th Street Passage, which leads to 45th Street and Madison Avenue, and the network of tunnels in Grand Central North, which lead to exits at every street from 45th to 48th Street.
Each of the east–west passageways runs through a different building. The northernmost is the Graybar Passage, built on the first floor of the Graybar Building in 1926. Its walls and seven large transverse arches are made of coursed ashlar travertine, and the floor is terrazzo. The ceiling is composed of seven groin vaults, each of which has an ornamental bronze chandelier. The first two vaults, as viewed from leaving Grand Central, are painted with cumulus clouds, while the third contains a 1927 mural by Edward Trumbull depicting American transportation.
The middle passageway houses Grand Central Market, a cluster of food shops. The site was originally a segment of 43rd Street which became the terminal's first service dock in 1913. In 1975, a Greenwich Savings Bank branch was built in the space, which was converted into the marketplace in 1998, and involved installing a new limestone facade on the building. The building's second story, whose balcony overlooks the market and 43rd Street, was to house a restaurant, but is instead used for storage.
The southernmost of the three, the Lexington Passage, was originally known as the Commodore Passage after the Commodore Hotel, which it ran through. When the hotel was renamed the Grand Hyatt, the passage was likewise renamed. The passage acquired its current name during the terminal's renovation in the 1990s.
The Shuttle Passage, on the west side of the terminal, connects the Main Concourse to Grand Central's subway station. The terminal was originally configured with two parallel passages, later simplified into one wide passageway.
Ramps include the Vanderbilt Avenue ramp and the Oyster Bar ramps. The Vanderbilt Avenue or Kitty Kelly ramp leads from the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and 42nd Street down into the Shuttle Passage. The ramp was likewise restored in 1998; originally and currently its space was two stories high. Most of the space was built upon, becoming the Kitty Kelly women's shoe store, and later operating as Federal Express.
Grand Central North is a network of four tunnels that allow people to walk between the station building (which sits between 42nd and 44th Street) and exits at 45th, 46th, 47th, and 48th Street. The Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage run parallel to the tracks on the upper level, while two shorter cross-passages run perpendicular to the tracks. The 47th Street cross-passage runs between the upper and lower tracks, below street level; it provides access to upper-level tracks. The 45th Street cross-passage runs under the lower tracks, below street level. Converted from a corridor built to transport luggage and mail, it provides access to lower-level tracks.
The tunnels' street-level entrances, each enclosed by a freestanding glass structure, sit at the northeast corner of East 47th Street and Madison Avenue (Northwest Passage), northeast corner of East 48th Street and Park Avenue (Northeast Passage), on the east and west sides of 230 Park Avenue (Helmsley Building) between 45th and 46th streets, and (since 2012) on the south side of 47th Street between Park and Lexington avenues. Pedestrians can also take an elevator to the 47th Street passage from the north side of East 47th Street, between Madison and Vanderbilt avenues.
Proposals for these tunnels had been discussed since at least the 1970s. The MTA approved preliminary plans in 1983, gave final approval in 1991, and began construction in 1994. Dubbed the North End Access Project, the work was to be completed in 1997 at a cost of $64.5 million, but it was slowed by the incomplete nature of the building's original blueprints and by previously undiscovered groundwater beneath East 45th Street. The passageways opened on August 18, 1999, at a final cost of $75 million.
The passages contain an MTA Arts & Design mosaic installation by Ellen Driscoll, an artist from Brooklyn.
The entrances to Grand Central North were originally open from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. About 30,000 people used it on a typical weekday, but only about 6,000 people on a typical weekend. Since summer 2006, Grand Central North has been closed on weekends; MTA officials cited low usage and the need to save money.
Vanderbilt Hall is an event space on the south side of the terminal, between the Park Avenue entrance located to its south and the Main Concourse located to its north. Its west side houses a food hall. The space is lit by Beaux-Arts chandeliers, each with 132 bulbs on four tiers.
It was formerly the main waiting room for the terminal, used particularly by intercity travelers. The space featured double-sided oak benches and could seat 700 people. When intercity service ceased at Grand Central in 1991, the room began to be used by several hundred homeless people. Terminal management responded first by removing the room's benches, then by closing the space entirely. In 1998, the hall was renovated and renamed Vanderbilt Hall after the family that built and owned the station. It is used for the annual Christmas Market, as well as for special exhibitions and private events.
Since 1999, Vanderbilt Hall has hosted the annual Tournament of Champions squash championship. Each January, tournament officials construct a free-standing glass-enclosed squash court. Like a theatre in the round, spectators sit on three sides of the court.
In 2016, the west half of the hall became the Great Northern Food Hall, an upscale Nordic-themed food court with five pavilions. The food hall is the first long-term tenant of the space; the terminal's landmark status prevents permanent installations.
A men's smoking room and women's waiting room were formerly located on the west and east sides of Vanderbilt Hall, respectively. In 2016, the men's room was renovated into Agern, an 85-seat Nordic-themed fine dining and Michelin-starred restaurant operated by Noma co-founder Claus Meyer, who also runs the food hall.
The Biltmore Room is a marble hall northwest of the Main Concourse that serves as an entrance to tracks 39 through 42. Completed in 1915 directly beneath the New York Biltmore Hotel, it originally served as a waiting room for intercity trains known formally as the incoming train room and colloquially as the "Kissing Room".
The room's blackboard displayed the arrival and departure times of New York Central trains until 1967, when a mechanical board was installed in the Main Concourse.
The Station Master's Office, located near Track 36, has Grand Central's only dedicated waiting room. The space has benches, restrooms, and a floral mixed-media mural on three of its walls. The room's benches were previously located in the former waiting room, now known as Vanderbilt Hall. Since 2008, the area has offered free Wi-Fi.
The theater stopped showing newsreels by 1968 but continued operating until around 1979, when it was gutted for retail space. A renovation in the early 2000s removed a false ceiling, revealing the theater's projection window and its astronomical mural, which proved similar in colors and style to the Main Concourse ceiling.
Access to the lower-level tracks is provided by the Dining Concourse, located below the Main Concourse and connected to it by numerous stairs, ramps, and escalators. For decades, it was called the Suburban Concourse because it handled commuter rail trains. Today, it has central seating and lounge areas, surrounded by restaurants and food vendors. The shared public seating in the concourse was designed resembling Pullman traincars. These areas are frequented by the homeless, and as a result, in the mid-2010s the MTA created two areas with private seating for dining customers.
The terminal's late-1990s renovation added stands and restaurants to the concourse, and installed escalators to link it to the main concourse level. The MTA also spent $2.2 million to install two circular terrazzo designs by David Rockwell and Beyer Blinder Belle, each 45 feet in diameter, over the concourse's original terrazzo floor. Since 2015, part of the Dining Concourse has been closed for the construction of stairways and escalators to the new LIRR terminal being built as part of East Side Access.
A small square-framed clock is installed in the ceiling near Tracks 108 and 109. It was manufactured at an unknown time by the Self Winding Clock Company, which made several others in the terminal. The clock hung inside the gate at Track 19 until 2011, when it was moved so it would not be blocked by lights added during upper-level platform improvements.
Metro-North's lost-and-found bureau sits near Track 100 at the far east end of the Dining Concourse. Incoming items are sorted according to function and date: for instance, there are separate bins for hats, gloves, belts, and ties. The sorting system was computerized in the 1990s. Lost items are kept for up to 90 days before being donated or auctioned off.
As early as 1920, the bureau received between 15,000 and 18,000 items a year. By 2002, the bureau was collecting "3,000 coats and jackets; 2,500 cellphones; 2,000 sets of keys; 1,500 wallets, purses and ID's ; and 1,100 umbrellas" a year. By 2007, it was collecting 20,000 items a year, 60% of which were eventually claimed. In 2013, the bureau reported an 80% return rate, among the highest in the world for a transit agency.
Some of the more unusual items collected by the bureau include fake teeth, prosthetic body parts, legal documents, diamond pouches, live animals, and a $100,000 violin. One story has it that a woman purposely left her unfaithful husband's ashes on a Metro-North train before collecting them three weeks later. In 1996, some of the lost-and-found items were displayed at an art exhibition.
Grand Central Terminal contains restaurants such as the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant and various fast food outlets surrounding the Dining Concourse. There are also delis, bakeries, a gourmet and fresh food market, and an annex of the New York Transit Museum. The 40-plus retail stores include newsstands and chain stores, including a Starbucks coffee shop, a Rite Aid pharmacy, and an Apple Store. The Oyster Bar, the oldest business in the terminal, sits next to the Dining Concourse and below Vanderbilt Hall.
An elegantly restored cocktail lounge, the Campbell, sits just south of the 43rd Street/Vanderbilt Avenue entrance. A mix of commuters and tourists access it from the street or the balcony level. The space was once the office of 1920s tycoon John W. Campbell, who decorated it to resemble the galleried hall of a 13th-century Florentine palace. In 1999, it opened as a bar, the Campbell Apartment; a new owner renovated and renamed it the Campbell in 2017.
From 1939 to 1964, CBS Television occupied a large portion of the terminal building, particularly in a third-floor space above Vanderbilt Hall. The CBS offices, called "The Annex", contained two "program control" facilities (43 and 44); network master control; facilities for local station WCBS-TV; and, after World War II, two production studios (41 and 42). The total space measured . Broadcasts were transmitted from an antenna atop the nearby Chrysler Building installed by order of CBS chief executive William S. Paley, and were also shown on a large screen in the Main Concourse. In 1958, CBS opened the world's first major videotape operations facility in Grand Central. Located in a former rehearsal room on the seventh floor, the facility used 14 Ampex VR-1000 videotape recorders.
"Douglas Edwards with the News" broadcast from Grand Central for several years, covering John Glenn's 1962 Mercury-Atlas 6 space flight and other events. Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" originated there, including his famous broadcasts on Senator Joseph McCarthy, which were recreated in George Clooney's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck", although the film incorrectly implies that CBS News and corporate offices were in the same building. The long-running panel show "What's My Line?" was first broadcast from Grand Central, as were "The Goldbergs" and "Mama". CBS eventually moved its operations to the CBS Broadcast Center on 57th Street.
Grand Central Terminal's basements are among the largest in the city. Basement spaces include M42, which has AC-to-DC converters to power the track's third rails as well as Carey's Hole, a former retail storage space and present-day employee lounge and dormitory.
Grand Central Terminal contains an underground sub-basement known as M42. Its electrical substation is divided into substation 1T, which provides for third-rail power, and substation 1L, which provides for other lighting and power. The substation—the world's largest at the time—was built about under the Graybar Building at a cost of $3 million, and opened February 16, 1930. It occupies a four-story space with an area of .
The terminal holds the Guinness World Record for having the most platforms of any railroad station: 28, which support 44 platform numbers. All are island platforms except one side platform. Odd-numbered tracks are usually on the east side of the platform; even-numbered tracks on the west side. , there are 67 tracks, of which 43 are in regular passenger use, serving Metro-North. At its opening, the train shed contained 123 tracks, including duplicate track numbers and storage tracks, with a combined length of .
The tracks slope down as they exit the station to the north, to help departing trains accelerate and arriving ones slow down. Because of the size of the rail yards, Park Avenue and its side streets from 43rd to 59th Streets are raised on viaducts, and the surrounding blocks were covered over by various buildings.
At its busiest, the terminal is served by an arriving train every 58 seconds.
The upper Metro-North level has 42 numbered tracks. Twenty-nine serve passenger platforms; these are numbered 11 to 42, east to west. Tracks 12, 22, and 31 do not exist, and appear to have been removed. To the east of the upper platforms sits the East Yard: ten storage tracks numbered 1 through 10 from east to west. A balloon loop runs from Tracks 38–42 on the far west side of the station, around the other tracks, and back to storage Tracks 1–3 at the far east side of the station; this allows trains to turn around more easily.
Track 63 held MNCW #002, a baggage car, for about 20 to 30 years. The railcar's location near Roosevelt's Track 61 led former tour guide Dan Brucker and others to falsely claim that this was the president's personal train car used for transporting his limousine. The baggage car was moved to the Danbury Railway Museum in 2019.
The lower Metro-North level has 27 tracks numbered 100 to 126, east to west. Two were originally intended for mail trains and two were for baggage handling. Today, only Tracks 102–112 and 114–115 are used for passenger service. The lower-level balloon loop, whose curve was much sharper than that of the upper-level loop and could only handle electric multiple units used on commuter lines was removed at an unknown date. Tracks 116–125 were demolished to make room for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) concourse being built under the Metro-North station as part of the East Side Access project.
The upper and lower levels have different track layouts and, as such, are supported by different sets of columns. The upper level is supported by ultra-strong columns, some of which can carry over .
The LIRR terminal being built as part of East Side Access will add four platforms and eight tracks numbered 201–204 and 301–304 in two double-decked caverns below the Metro-North station. The new LIRR station will have four tracks and two platforms in each of the two caverns, with each cavern containing two tracks and one platform on each level. A mezzanine will sit on a center level between the LIRR's two track levels.
Upper floors of the terminal primarily hold MTA offices, including the fifth-floor office of the terminal's director, overlooking the Main Concourse. The seventh floor contains Metro-North's situation room for handling emergencies, as well as the offices of the Fleet Department.
Grand Central Terminal has a single Operations Control Center, where controllers monitor the track interlockings with computers. Completed in 1993, the center is operated by a crew of about 24 people. The terminal was originally built with five signal control centers, labeled A, B, C, F, and U, that collectively controlled all of the track interlockings around the terminal. Each switch was electrically controlled by a lever in one of the signal towers, where lights illuminated on track maps to show which switches were in use. As trains passed a given tower, the signal controllers reported the train's engine and timetable numbers, direction, track number, and the exact time.
Tower U controlled the interlocking between 48th and 58th streets; Tower C, the storage spurs; and Tower F, the turning loops. A four-story underground tower at 49th Street housed the largest of the signal towers: Tower A, which handled the upper-level interlockings via 400 levers, and Tower B, which handled the lower-level interlockings with 362 levers. The towers housed offices for the stationmaster, yardmaster, car-maintenance crew, electrical crew, and track-maintenance crew. There were also break rooms for conductors, train engineers, and engine men. After Tower B was destroyed in a fire in 1986, the signal towers were consolidated into the modern control center.
Another library, the Frank Julian Sprague Memorial Library of the Electric Railroaders Association, was created in the terminal in 1979. The library has about 500,000 publications and slides, focusing on electric rail and trolley lines. A large amount of these works were donated to the New York Transit Museum in 2013.
Grand Central Terminal was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Reed and Stem, which was responsible for the overall design of the terminal, and Warren and Wetmore, which mainly made cosmetic alterations to the exterior and interior. Various elements inside the terminal were designed by French architects and artists Jules-Félix Coutan, Sylvain Salières, and Paul César Helleu. Grand Central has both monumental spaces and meticulously crafted detail, especially on its facade. The facade is based on an overall exterior design by Whitney Warren.
The terminal is widely recognized and favorably viewed by the American public. In America's Favorite Architecture, a 2006-07 public survey by the American Institute of Architects, respondents ranked it their 13th-favorite work of architecture in the country, and their fourth-favorite in the city and state after the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 2013, historian David Cannadine described it as one of the most majestic buildings of the twentieth century. The terminal is also recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, added in 2013.
As proposed in 1904, Grand Central Terminal was bounded by Vanderbilt Avenue to the west, Lexington Avenue to the east, 42nd Street to the south, and 45th Street to the north. It included a post office on its east side. The east side of the station house proper is an alley called Depew Place, which was built along with the Grand Central Depot annex in the 1880s and mostly decommissioned in the 1900s when the new terminal was built.
The station house measures along Vanderbilt Avenue (120 feet longer than originally planned), on 42nd Street, and tall.
The station and its rail yard have steel frames. The building also uses large steel columns designed to hold the weight of a 20-story office building, which was to be built when additional room was required.
The facade and structure of the terminal building primarily use granite. Because granite emits radiation, people who work full-time in the station receive an average dose of 525 mrem/year, more than permitted in nuclear power facilities. The base of the exterior is Stony Creek granite, while the upper portion is of Indiana limestone, from Bedford, Indiana.
The interiors use several varieties of stone, including imitation Caen stone for the Main Concourse; cream-colored Botticino marble for the interior decorations; and pink Tennessee marble for the floors of the Main Concourse, Biltmore Room, and Vanderbilt Hall, as well as the two staircases in the Main Concourse. Real Caen stone was judged too expensive, so the builders mixed plaster, sand, lime, and Portland cement. Most of the remaining masonry is made from concrete. Guastavino tiling, a fireproof tile-and-cement vault pattern patented by Rafael Guastavino, is used in various spaces.
In designing the facade of Grand Central, the architects wanted to make the building seem like a gateway to the city. The south facade, facing 42nd Street, is the front side of the terminal building, and contains large arched windows. The central window resembles a triumphal arch. There are two pairs of columns on either side of the central window. The columns are of the Corinthian order, and are partially attached to the granite walls behind them, though they are detached from one another. The facade was also designed to complement that of the New York Public Library Main Branch, another Beaux-Arts edifice located on nearby Fifth Avenue.
The facade includes several large works of art. At the top of the south facade is a clock. The clock is surrounded by the "Glory of Commerce" sculptural group, a sculpture by Jules-Félix Coutan, which includes representations of Minerva, Hercules, and Mercury. At its unveiling in 1914, the work was considered the largest sculptural group in the world. Below these works, facing the Park Avenue Viaduct, is an 1869 statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, longtime owner of New York Central. Sculpted by Ernst Plassmann, the bronze is the last remnant of a 150-foot bronze relief installed at the Hudson River Railroad depot at St. John's Park; it was moved to Grand Central Terminal in 1929.
The Main Concourse, on the terminal's upper platform level, is located in the geographical center of the station building. The cavernous concourse measures long by wide by high; a total of about . Its vastness was meant to evoke the terminal's "grand" status.
Many parts of the terminal are adorned with sculpted oak leaves and acorns, nuts of the oak tree. Cornelius Vanderbilt chose the acorn as the symbol of the Vanderbilt family, and adopted the saying "Great oaks from little acorns grow" as the family motto. Among these decorations is a brass acorn finial atop the four-sided clock in the center of the Main Concourse. Other acorn or oak leaf decorations include carved wreaths under the Main Concourse's west stairs; sculptures above the lunettes in the Main Concourse; metalwork above the elevators; reliefs above the train gates; and the electric chandeliers in the Main Waiting Room and Main Concourse. These decorations were designed by Salières.
Among the buildings modeled on Grand Central's design is the Poughkeepsie station, a Metro-North and Amtrak station in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was also designed by Warren and Wetmore and opened in 1918. Additionally, Union Station in Utica, New York was partially designed after Grand Central.
The Park Avenue Viaduct is an elevated road that carries Park Avenue around the terminal building and the MetLife Building and through the Helmsley Building — three buildings that lie across the line of the avenue. The viaduct rises from street level on 40th Street south of Grand Central, splits into eastern (northbound) and western (southbound) legs above the terminal building's main entrance, and continues north around the station building, directly above portions of its main level. The legs of the viaduct pass around the MetLife Building, into the Helmsley Building, and return to street level at 46th Street.
The viaduct was built to facilitate traffic along 42nd Street and along Park Avenue, which at the time was New York City's only discontinuous major north–south avenue. When the western leg of the viaduct was completed in 1919, it served both directions of traffic, and also served as a second level for picking up and dropping off passengers. After an eastern leg for northbound traffic was added in 1928, the western leg was used for southbound traffic only. A sidewalk, accessible from the Grand Hyatt hotel, runs along the section of the viaduct that is parallel to 42nd Street.
The terminal complex also originally included a six-story building for baggage handling just north of the main station building. Departing passengers unloaded their luggage from taxis or personal vehicles on the Park Avenue Viaduct, and elevators brought it to the baggage passageways (now part of Grand Central North), where trucks brought the luggage to the respective platforms. The process was reversed for arriving passengers. Biltmore Hotel guests arriving at Grand Central could get baggage delivered to their rooms. The baggage building was later converted to an office building, and was demolished in 1961 to make way for the MetLife Building.
The terminal's subway station, Grand Central–42nd Street, serves three lines: the IRT Lexington Avenue Line (serving the ), the IRT Flushing Line (serving the ), and the IRT 42nd Street Shuttle to Times Square. Originally built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the lines are operated by the MTA as part of the New York City Subway.
The Main Concourse is connected to the subway platforms' mezzanine via the Shuttle Passage. The platforms can also be reached from the 42nd Street Passage via stairs, escalators, and an elevator to the fare control area for the Lexington Avenue and Flushing Lines.
During the terminal's construction, there were proposals to allow commuter trains to pass through Grand Central and continue into the subway tracks. However, these plans were deemed impractical because commuter trains would have been too large to fit within the subway tunnels.
Three buildings serving essentially the same function have stood on the current Grand Central Terminal's site.
Grand Central Terminal arose from a need to build a central station for the Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad in modern-day Midtown Manhattan. The Harlem Railroad originally ran as a steam railroad on street level along Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue), while the New Haven Railroad ran along the Harlem's tracks in Manhattan per a trackage agreement. The business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt bought the Hudson River and New York Central Railroads in 1867, and merged them two years later. Vanderbilt developed a proposal to unite the three separate railroads at a single central station, replacing the separate and adjacent stations that created chaos in baggage transfer.
Grand Central Depot had reached its capacity again by the late 1890s, and it carried 11.5 million passengers a year by 1897. As a result, the railroads renovated the head house extensively based on plans by railroad architect Bradford Gilbert. The reconstructed building was renamed Grand Central Station. The new waiting room opened in October 1900.
The entire building was to be torn down in phases and replaced by the current Grand Central Terminal. It was to be the biggest terminal in the world, both in the size of the building and in the number of tracks. The Grand Central Terminal project was divided into eight phases, though the construction of the terminal itself comprised only two of these phases.
The current building was intended to compete with the since-demolished Pennsylvania Station, a majestic electric-train hub being built on Manhattan's west side for arch-rival Pennsylvania Railroad by McKim, Mead & White. In 1903, New York Central invited four architecture firms to a design competition to decide who would design the new terminal. Reed and Stem were ultimately selected, as were Warren and Wetmore, who were not part of the original competition. Reed and Stem were responsible for the overall design of the station, while Warren and Wetmore worked on designing the station's Beaux-Arts exterior. However, the team had a tense relationship due to constant design disputes.
Construction on Grand Central Terminal started on June 19, 1903. Wilgus proposed to demolish, excavate, and build the terminal in three sections or "bites", to prevent railroad service from being interrupted during construction. About of the ground were excavated at depths of up to 10 floors, with of debris being removed from the site daily. Over 10,000 workers were assigned to the project. The total cost of improvements, including electrification and the development of Park Avenue, was estimated at $180 million in 1910. Electric trains on the Hudson Line started running to Grand Central on September 30, 1906, and the segments of all three lines running into Grand Central had been electrified by 1907.
After the last train left Grand Central Station at midnight on June 5, 1910, workers promptly began demolishing the old station. The last remaining tracks from the former Grand Central Station were decommissioned on June 21, 1912. The new terminal was opened on February 2, 1913.
The terminal spurred development in the surrounding area, particularly in Terminal City, a commercial and office district created above where the tracks were covered. The development of Terminal City also included the construction of the Park Avenue Viaduct, surrounding the station, in the 1920s. The new electric service led to increased development in New York City's suburbs, and passenger traffic on the commuter lines into Grand Central more than doubled in the seven years following the terminal's completion. Passenger traffic grew so rapidly that by 1918, New York Central proposed expanding Grand Central Terminal.
In 1923, the Grand Central Art Galleries opened in the terminal. A year after it opened, the galleries established the Grand Central School of Art, which occupied on the seventh floor of the east wing of the terminal. The Grand Central School of Art remained in the east wing until 1944, and it moved to the Biltmore Hotel in 1958.
In 1947, over 65 million people traveled through Grand Central, an all-time high. The station's decline came soon afterward with the beginning of the Jet Age and the construction of the Interstate Highway System. There were multiple proposals to alter the terminal, including several replacing the station building with a skyscraper; none of the plans were carried out. Though the main building site was not redeveloped, the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building) was erected just to the north, opening in 1963.

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