by Sam Roberts
On July 11, 1907, after learning that the railroad was redesigning the locomotives without consulting him, Wilgus resigned. Replying to the departing chief engineer, who by then was making a very respectable $40,000 a year, W.C. Brown, the railroad’s senior vice president, wrote, “The great work undertaken and practically completed by you, of changing the power within the so-called electric zone and the reconstruction of the Grand Central Station, was the most stupendous work of engineering I have ever known; and it has gone forward practically without a halt, certainly without a failure in any essential feature.”
Wilgus, who was succeeded by George Kittredge, Edwin B. Katte, and George A. Harwood, would spend the rest of his life seeking the credit he deserved. In 1909, he received a measure of vindication when the Central’s directors, while embracing Whitney Warren’s resplendent concourse, restored two features that Wilgus and Reed & Stem had originally proposed: the elevated roadway that routed Park Avenue around the terminal, and the structural foundation for a revenue-producing tower that might someday be built over the building.
Four years later, though, as best as can be determined, Wilgus was never mentioned publicly when Grand Central was formally dedicated. Nor would his bold plan to bore 60 miles of rail freight tunnels to link Manhattan with Staten Island and New Jersey ever be realized. He would become deputy director general of transportation for the American Expeditionary Forces under General Pershing and was credited with the strategy that won the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in September 1918, which broke the German defensive line and facilitated the Americans’ Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
Whitney Warren, too, merits a World War I footnote. Warren was chosen to rebuild the Louvain Library in Belgium, insisting that it bear the inscription “Furore Teutonico Diruta: Dono Americano Restituto” (destroyed by German fury; restored by American generosity). Warren, who became an admirer of Mussolini, lived long enough to see the library destroyed again, by the Nazis.
“GRAND CENTRAL ACHIEVED A GREATER IMPACT on the urban fabric of New York than any other building project in the first half of the 19th century, until construction began on Rockefeller Center,” Kurt Schlichting wrote. Less than a decade after the terminal opened, Railway Age concluded, “It is doubtful if even the most optimistic participants in the work in question ever looked forward to seeing just how great an effect the electrification and terminal improvement were going to have on the development of New York City.” William Wilgus had, and he was right.
WAITING FOR THE CENTURY IN THE ROARING TWENTIES. THE CELEBRITY-STUDDED TRAIN WOVE ITS WAY INTO POPULAR CULTURE.
ALL ABOARD
FULLY TWO DECADES have elapsed since the last regularly scheduled long-haul run transported passengers more than 90 miles from 42nd Street in any direction. But for all the magic of the terminal building itself, it was the glamour of train travel during the first half of the 20th century that transformed Grand Central into a metaphor for cosmopolitan sophistication. The exoticness of the Orient Express, the magnitude of the Trans-Siberian, the exclusivity of Le Train Bleu, would spark imaginations for generations. In America, which offered the California Zephyr and the City of New Orleans, no train carried as much cachet as the New York Central’s flagship No. 26—the westbound 20th Century Limited. In The Art of the Streamliner, Bob Johnston and Joe Welsh wrote that transportation historians consistently pronounced the 1938 version of the Century as “the world’s ultimate passenger conveyance—at least on the ground.”
RED CARPETS HAVE BEEN SYNONYMOUS WITH PRESTIGE since at least 458 BCE, when, according to Aeschylus, Agamemnon was welcomed home from Troy by Clytemnestra, who persuaded him to enter his palace on a “crimson path.” In modern times, the “red carpet treatment” was popularized by the 20th Century Limited, which the New York Central inaugurated just before construction began on its new terminal. Like many of the named trains, this one was the brainchild of George Henry Daniels, a former Mississippi steamboat crewman and patent medicine salesman who turned his promotional skills to railroading as the New York Central’s general passenger agent. It was Daniels who, in 1893, engineered a new world speed record on the crack Empire State Express between Buffalo and New York City. Hauled by Engine 999, built in West Albany, the express hit 112.5 mph east of Rochester.
The Empire was billed as the world’s first high-speed passenger train, taking just seven hours and six minutes on September 14, 1891, to cover the 436 miles between New York City and Buffalo, as the first scheduled passenger train to travel regularly at more than 52 mph. The Empire also broke the record for going the longest distance between stops, the nearly 143 miles from New York to Albany. No. 999 was celebrated as a centerpiece of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, was honored by a two-cent stamp issued by the post office, and inspired several songs. A streamlined version crafted in fluted stainless steel was christened in 1941. The timing could not have been worse: the service was inaugurated on December 7, which meant it was overshadowed by events that day in Hawaii; the locomotive is on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
Daniels was credited with (or took credit for) naming the famed redcaps and originating other train names, including the Wolverine, the Commodore Vanderbilt, the Pacemaker, and the three dozen that constituted the Central’s Great Steel Fleet, which hugged the Hudson and Lake Erie. (Daniels was not omniscient, though; in 1900, he famously declared that it was “safe to assume that it will hardly be possible to apply electricity to haul great passenger trains.”)
IN 1920, WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT (LEFT) AND CENTRAL PRESIDENT CROWLEY JOINED ALBERT STONE, WHOM THE RAILROAD HIRED IN 1850, ON A CHICAGO EXPRESS.
Daniels’s advertising and promotional genius extended well beyond railroading. He popularized the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River as a tourist destination. He even helped create a literary hit, which evolved into a common catchphrase. In 1899 Elbert Hubbard published his “Message to Garcia” in the March issue of Philistine magazine. The story was about Andrew Summers Rowan, an army lieutenant who unhesitatingly braves the Cuban jungle to deliver a missive from the president of the United States to an insurgent general. Daniels promptly called the author and got permission to reprint more than a million copies of his short story with a bold advertisement for the Empire State Express on the back—presumably another example of pertinacity in transportation: Rowan delivered. So does the Central.
ON THE 20TH CENTURY LIMITED, guests, both famous and long since forgotten, received the special amenities they expected. Traveling on the Century halfway across the continent was comparable to crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. The train ultimately had its own barbershop, secretarial services, concierge, manicurist, valet, a telephone connection (dial Murray Hill 9-8000 when the Century was in Grand Central, Wabash 2-4200 in Chicago), air-conditioning (which was not available on any of the Central’s commuter trains until 1950), circulating ice water, two dining cars, its own post office (mail would be postmarked “N.Y. & CHI. R.P.O. E.D. 20TH CEN. LTD.” and the train’s number), radios that as early as 1924 reported presidential election results, and a luxury suite—shower included.
By the early 1900s, Pullman cars painted an emblematic forest green had replaced the wooden Wagner Palace sleeping cars that the Central had originally used on longer runs. “The Water Level Route—You Can Sleep,” advertisements for the Century crowed. Each train was equipped with eight Pullman cars containing roomettes, bedrooms, or suites; two dining cars; and a club car (railroaders call this the train’s consist—the number and types of cars it consists of). The observation car included a room with two berths, club chairs, a shower, and an adjacent double bedroom. The Century offered carnations for men, perfume for women, and free morning newspapers (the Chicago Tribune or the New York Herald-Tribune) delivered to passengers’ compartments. During Prohibition, booze was available, and even before the era of quiet cars, signs cautioned passengers, “Quiet is requested for the benefit of those who have retired.”
ON JUNE 17, 1902, the inaugural run got to Chicago three minutes earlier than the 20 hours scheduled. That was an astounding four hours shorter than regular trains. No biggie, said the engineer, William Gates. “This schedule can be made without any difficulty,” he boasted. The Central’s insistence that no special effort was expended to maintain record-breaking on-time performance, that the Century was “a perfectly practical run,” was a little disingenuous. That the nearly 1,000-mile run between Grand Central and Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station eventually could be made in as little as 15 hours, 30 minutes, was no accident. The railroad even guaranteed passengers a partial rebate if the Century was late.
The train switched from an electric locomotive to steam at Croton-Harmon and ultimately could reach Chicago without refueling. Water to replenish the thirsty steam locomotives was scooped up at 80 mph by pans from troughs between the rails (giving rise to the stigma “jerkwater towns,” where trains didn’t stop). The Century “had the road,” which meant all other trains had to yield to it, and it was exempted from the rule that trains could not pass a waypoint earlier than scheduled. As its chronicler, Lucius Beebe wrote, “the entire collective will power of the New York Central System seemed to focus on getting The Century through with the least possible delay. High priority freight might freeze to the tracks at Buffalo and other ranking trains go into the hole all the way from Cleveland to Elkhart, but extra gangs and flaggers, wedge plows and helper engines, diverted from other runs combined to get the line’s crack varnish over the road with the least possible damage to its schedule.” That schedule was so precise that the Century’s progress could be timed to 30 seconds. No wonder it was originally promoted as a “train a century ahead of its time.”
Advertisements in agate on the front page of the Times boasted that the train made the trip in 20 hours and, therefore, “is appropriately named” the 20th Century Limited. Other ads proclaimed it “The Busy Man’s Train” and the “Fastest Long Distance Train in the World” and crowed, “It Saves a Day.” In 1928, the Century grossed more than $11 million, setting a record for one train that was said to be unequaled. Ominously, though, that same year the Century was beaten to Chicago by a car driven by Erwin “Cannon Ball” Baker, who would become the first NASCAR commissioner.
THE CENTURY customarily left from Grand Central’s Track 34, where the football field–length crimson carpet was ceremoniously rolled out on the 1,525-foot-long platform, the terminal’s longest, each evening for departing passengers. Over six decades, they included tycoons and celebrities—among them, Enrico Caruso, J.P. Morgan, Theodore Roosevelt, Kate Smith, James Cagney, Rosalind Russell, and Walter Chrysler Sr. Tickets could be purchased at a special window (the fare in the 1920s was $32.70, plus $9.60 extra for the Century, and Pullman charges [$9 for a lower berth]; the total was $51.30, or about $700 in today’s dollars). Because all of the cars were Pullman sleepers, the Century carried relatively few passengers.
RED CARPET TREATMENT AS A SYNONYM FOR LUXURY WAS POPULARIZED BY THE 20TH CENTURY LIMITED.
MAYOR JAMES J. WALKER AND WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT JR. INAUGURATED 18-HOUR SERVICE TO CHICAGO IN 1932.
In 1938, the Central introduced its streamlined blue-and-gray-striped stainless-steel train, including a glass-enclosed observation car equipped with radio and speedometers for obsessive passengers and engineered by industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, the Brooklyn-born genius who created a vast range of everyday appurtenances from the Princess telephone to the Big Ben alarm clock. His sleek, bullet-nosed, gun-metal-gray Art Deco locomotive with its distinguishing fin and the accompanying Pullman, dining, and observation cars have been described as the most famous American passenger train ever built. (Raymond Loewy was attempting the same for the Pennsy’s Broadway Limited, which began regular competition with the Century in 1912.) The engine’s wheels were lighted at night for maximum effect, and Al Gengler, a train buff, wrote, “It had the self-assurance of a Wall Street banker’s business suit, with blue chalk stripes and an Art Moderne drumhead glowing red and blue as it raced along the right-of-way.” The distinctive and elegant logo that Dreyfuss designed, sleek horizontal bars underscoring the name of the train, adorned everything from the red carpet to the crockery.
The Century could reach speeds of 123 mph and make the 961-mile trip between Grand Central and Chicago in 960 minutes. The route of the Broadway Limited was 52 miles shorter, but more mountainous, crossing the Alleghenies (its Tuscan red trains are still evoked by the decorative mosaic tile in Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station subway stop). Comparing the two trains, Time magazine pronounced them “alike in contour as a brace of eels” but went on to contrast their dining cars—the Century’s “informal but sober” (where a full dinner cost $1.75 in 1939 and $6.95 by 1967) and the Broadway Limited’s “more splendiferous.”
After World War II, when the Central focused more heavily on ferrying troops from the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard to embarkation points, Henry Dreyfuss introduced an even more modern diesel version. In 1948 General Dwight D. Eisenhower inaugurated the new train, and the actress Beatrice Lillie, echoing the ceremonial opening of the Erie Canal, christened the locomotives with water from the Hudson, Lake Erie, and Lake Michigan. But within a decade, the glamour of train travel was giving way to much greater speed, convenience, and independence—well before the era of long airport lines and security checkpoints.
The allure of the luxury trains would be eroded by both the airplane, which could travel from airport to airport (though not from downtown to downtown) in a fraction of the time that the speediest train could muster, and the automobile, which could stop anywhere at a passenger’s whim. Train traffic peaked right after World War II, just before commercial air travel became more available and affordable. In 1947, 65 million passengers arrived at or departed from Grand Central on nearly 600 trains daily. (As the historian Francis Morrone astutely noted a decade ago, “at the height of its activity, in the years just after the Second World War, Grand Central served about the same number of passengers as the world’s busiest airport does today, even though Grand Central uses only 1 percent as much land as the airport does.”)
Less than two decades later, with the merged Central verging on bankruptcy and airlines providing what amounted to shuttle service to and from Chicago, the 20th Century Limited made its final run. It had descended more or less gracefully into threadbare elegance. It was slower and even more expensive than an airplane (one way by coach, the cheapest ticket, cost $43.26, compared to $43.70 by jetliner, and sleeping accommodations were costlier).
On some nights, the 80-man train crew outnumbered the passengers. On December 2, 1967, just a month after the Queen Mary’s final voyage, the Century left Grand Central for the last time. It departed precisely on time, at 6 p.m., from Track 34. A brakeman, Herbert P. Stevens, gave the highball signal that the track ahead was clear, but the train was only half-full, carrying 104 passengers. By the time it reached the environs of Ashtabula the following morning, it was no longer Train No. 25, because at 4 a.m. the railroad’s new timetable took effect. As a conductor told a New Yorker correspondent who was researching the last run for Ernest M. Frimbo, the magazine’s legendary railroad buff, “We’re ‘25’ until 4. Then we become ‘27,’ and that’s the end of the Century.” (As it happened, the train was delayed by a derailment, and when 4 a.m. struck, the Century was still in Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania.) The Century was due in Chicago at 9:40 a.m., but by lunchtime it was only in Cleveland; Sunday blue laws in Ohio and Indiana barred the serving of liquor in the dining cars.
NEW YORK CENTRAL “STREAMLINERS” EPITOMIZED MODERNITY AND LUXURY.
The train finally straggled into Chicago at 6:45 p.m., which meant the last run of the Century arrived nine hours late and took nearly five hours longer than the inaugural trip 65 years earlier. “I’m sorry that it couldn’t have been on time,” the engineer, J.A. McLain of Elkhart, Indiana, said. The timing provided a fitting validation of the prefix late before the 20th Century Limited. T
en days later, the Broadway Limited left from Penn Station for the last time.
IN 1929, ONLY THE CENTRAL’S HEADQUARTERS TOWERED OVER THE TERMINAL. THE COMMODORE HOTEL (NOW THE GRAND HYATT) IS AT RIGHT.
IN 1989, AMTRAK, the federally financed passenger rail system, announced that it would abandon Grand Central altogether and consolidate its operations at the grungy hole in the ground on the West Side that had replaced the original Penn Station, which Amtrak by then more or less owned. Bypassing Grand Central would spare through passengers from Albany to Florida having to scurry across Midtown Manhattan by foot or on public transportation. The shift would save Amtrak $600,000 in fees for electricity and other services paid to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But it would cost $100 million to lay 10 miles of new rails over a forsaken freight-track bed and past a colony of squatters and to renovate the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, which spans the Harlem River and links Manhattan and the Bronx. The shift affected 20 trains a day serving upstate New York and Canada and as many as a million passengers a year.
“The world won’t end,” said Kent Barwick, the president of the Municipal Art Society, which had fought to save the terminal from demolition, “but who would have thought that in one fell swoop they could saw off Grand Central Terminal from the rest of America?”