Entertainment

Grand Central Terminal: My landmark New York

Grand Central Terminal is 100 years old as of this weekend, and for nearly a third of that time, Justin Ferate has been singing the building’s praises in public. A social and architectural historian and longtime leader of city walking tours, Ferate gave his first tour of Grand Central 32 years ago, and since then he’s led thousands of people through the terminal, pointing out details and spinning yarns about the history of the grand Beaux-Arts structure. He still sounds passionate when speaking about a building he calls “magical.” “What contemporary building can you think of that has the same sense of drama and magic and excitement and can appeal to so many people on so many levels?” he says. “It’s amazing to realize that it’s 100 years old and it’s still exciting.” This is his Grand Central.

1. The Vanderbilt Statue

The statue of New York Central Railroad founder Cornelius Vanderbilt that sits in front of the southern façade predates the terminal by some 50 years. It was part of a 150-foot bronze frieze lionizing Vanderbilt that the ego-bloated magnate — the Donald Trump of his day — displayed at a rail terminal located where the Holland Tunnel entrance now sits.

“It was a glorification of how wonderful [he] was, which didn’t quite fit with the public view,” says Ferate.

When Vanderbilt’s children built Grand Central, “they put the statue there as an homage to him,” says Ferate.

2. The Concourse Ceiling

While you’re gawking at the starry mural above the main concourse, take note of a tiny, dark rectangular patch over by Michael Jordan’s Steak House – follow the golden zodiac band to the end and you’ll spot the small remnant of filth. It was left behind by the crews who in 1996 did a huge cleanup that stripped away decades of grime and nicotine smoke, restoring the beautiful blue. “They were afraid people would forget [their efforts], so they left that spot,” says Ferate.

3. The Preservation Plaque

This plaque pays tribute to Jackie O., who helped save Grand Central from plans in the 1980s to demolish it and replace it with an office tower. Preservationists, including Jackie O., rallied and the city Landmarks Commission squashed the demolition plan.

However, Ferate says the real hero was Dorothy Miner, head of the city’s legal team.

“No one knows Dorothy,” says Ferate. “But she changed the world.”

4. The Rats

Usually one looks down to see rats in New York City. Not so with one of the station’s more playful details – the rats that adorn the Graybar Building entrance on Lexington Avenue. The motif is borrowed from shipping – the metal “ropes” depict ships’ mooring lines, which sometimes featured cones designed to keep rats from climbing aboard. But why depict them here? “I think it’s about transportation and travel; remember that when that building was going up, New York was much more of a waterfront city than it is now,” says Ferate. By the way, look closely at those flower designs at the end of each rod. Each “petal” is a rat face. “Someone had a weird sense of humor,” says Ferate.

5. The Mini-Sky

Enter the Grande Harvest wine shop by track 17, look up and you’ll see a small sky mural that was part of a theater and cocktail lounge installed here in the early 1930s. The mural and the vaulted ceiling around it were discovered during the station’s renovation in the 1990s. “They took down a dropped ceiling and there it was,” says Ferate, who figures it was originally painted as a “loving homage” to the grand concourse mural.

6. The Eagles

Before Grand Central Terminal, there was Grand Central Depot, which was torn down in 1910 to make way for the new station; but two small pieces remain: a pair of ornamental cast-iron eagles.

One sits above the corner of 42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue; the one pictured left was placed above the entrance to the market in 1999, after it was donated by a Bronxville couple who found it in their back yard.

“That was the crowning piece of the market,” says Ferate. There were a dozen eagles on the original building; where the other 10 landed is unknown, he says.

7. The Sculpture

The 48 feet high and 60 feet wide sculpture at the peak of the building façade that faces 42nd Street was the largest in the world when it was unveiled in 1914. Mercury is at the top – the mythical god of transportation and commerce and “anything that needs to go fast,” says Ferate. To his right is Hercules, representing strength and labor; to his left is Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, whose hand is busy documenting the history of the world.

8. The Arrival Board

Look at the back of the Biltmore Room (also known as the “kissing room,” because long-distance travelers arrived there), in a corner by tracks 41 and 42, for a piece of station history. You’ll find the old arrivals board, on which train info was written in chalk, in its original spot on the back wall. “It gives you a sense of how the schedules used to be posted,” says Ferate, who’s particularly enamored of the train names — the Knickerbocker, the Mohawk – that evoke a time “when trains were still romantic.”