by Sam Roberts
OKAY, SO WHAT’S THE BIG MISTAKE IN THE CONCOURSE?
Put it this way: Cassius wasn’t talking about Grand Central’s cerulean ceiling when he said, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Once the proposed office tower was scrubbed, architects considered enclosing the concourse with a skylight but settled on an artificial sky instead. On March 22, 1913, a little more than a month after the terminal opened, an amateur astronomer commuting from New Rochelle alerted railroad officials that the constellations were backward. That would not present a problem for linear locomotive engineers, but any mariner navigating by Grand Central’s stars would wind up like another “Wrong Way” Corrigan.
So much for the artist Paul César Helleu’s gleeful comment to the critic Frederick Mordaunt-Hall at the Ritz barbershop the morning after the ceiling was completed: “J’ai eu des ennuis, qui m’ont presque bouleversé, mais maintenant tout est bien—car les étoiles brillent au firmament” (I have been nearly bowled over with worries, but now all is well—for the stars shine in the firmament).
The alert commuter’s discovery was doubly embarrassing because the railroad’s recently published official guide boasted, “It is safe to say that many school children will go to the Grand Central Terminal to study this representation of the heavens, which places the celestial bodies within close range of vision. To insure astronomical accuracy and beauty of form, the highest authorities were consulted, among them Dr. Harold Jacoby of Columbia University, and the research was carried back to manuscripts and treatises of the Middle Ages.”
FOR SOME REASON, ORION THE HUNTER, BRANDISHING HIS CLUB, WAS REVERSED TO FACE TAURUS THE BULL.
Red-faced railroad officials were caught short. Putting it in the best light, they suggested that while no mortal had ever seen the heavens from this perspective, the celestial mural represented God’s view. It was designed by Helleu and executed by him, J. Monroe Hewlett, Charles Guldbrandsen, and Charles Basing of Brooklyn on the basis of a chart provided by Professor Jacoby of Columbia, who was an expert on astronomy, but apparently not on how to wield a paintbrush in one hand while holding a diagram in the other.
Jacoby’s chart was derived from Johann Bayer’s famous Uranometria of 1603 (which, among other things, included a fly constellation that was merged into Aries by the International Astronomical Union in 1929. For some reason, Bayer reversed Orion—to face Taurus—so it is depicted correctly on the ceiling). Don’t blame me, Jacoby insisted. “Apparently the diagram was placed on the floor and there copied to the ceiling,” he explained blithely. “It might have been better if the artist had held the diagram over his head and transferred it, as it were, by looking through it.”
Responding to suggestions that the backward sky was more decorative, Dorrit Hoffleit, a Harvard astronomer, wrote in 1945, “Which is more decorative, a map with New York on the Atlantic at the east side of the United States and San Francisco on the west, as we are accustomed to having it, or one ‘inside out’ with New York west and San Francisco east…? For some mysterious reason,” Hoffleit concluded, “ostensibly ‘decorative,’ the constellations had been represented in reverse as if the artist had copied from the surface of a celestial globe, forgetting that the people in Grand Central would be looking up and out from the center of the vaulted heavens and not down from the outside.”
Years later, Susan Jacoby, a memoirist, wrote that her great-uncle, the Columbia professor, “was a Jacoby man, and Jacoby men (all of whom possess a bent for mathematics) also have a tendency toward absent-mindedness and disorganization.” She said it was easy to believe that he had not given instructions “on the critical detail of exactly where to place the chart while reproducing it on the ceiling,” adding, too, that “Michelangelo may have lain on his back to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel but no one ever noticed him holding a brush in one hand and a sketch in the other.”
Deborah Fulton Rau, who studied the mural for the Beyer Blinder Belle architectural firm, agreed that the goal was allegorical rather than navigational. “The sky ceiling brought a map of the universe into Grand Central’s orbit of travel, linking an ancient method of travel, that of using the positions of the stars for guidance, with a modern method of travel, the electrified train,” she wrote. “The vivid and gilded presence of the zodiacal figures insured that their celestial message would impart to the daily commute, to the long journey not yet taken, a spirit that soared beyond the earthly realm of travel.”
Beyer Blinder Belle’s historic structure report concluded that the progression of constellations was not so much a mistake as a manifestation of artistic license for a last-minute substitution for a skylight through which, light pollution notwithstanding, the heavens would have been visible. “Their positions relative to one another and to the lines of the ecliptic and celestial equator were intentionally rearranged to create a decorative composition that was appropriate to the shape of the ceiling and the architecture of the space,” the historians concluded.
AS LONG AS WE’RE LOOKING UP, WHAT ABOUT THAT OBVIOUS HOLE AND RECTANGLE IN THE CEILING?
The five-inch-diameter hole dates to 1957 and can be blamed on the space race with the Soviet Union. Washington was seeking to reassure Americans that the country had not fallen behind and was trying to drum up support for more defense spending. A five-ton Redstone missile arrived on Track 16 by flatcar from Detroit (courtesy of Chrysler, which manufactured the missile). This explanation may sound fishy (the hole is just above the constellation Pisces) since the missile was only 63 feet long and the ceiling of the Main Concourse is much higher. Apparently, though, the hole was cut to accommodate a cable installed to keep the rocket from tipping over during the three weeks it was on display. Why the hole remained is unclear (it was also used to tether a stuntman in the filming of the climactic chase scene through the terminal’s attic in The House on Carroll Street). A little more than two months later, the Soviets launched their Sputnik satellite, leaving a much bigger gap in Washington’s credibility.
About that dark patch: It’s in the northwest corner of the ceiling. It wasn’t added there. Everything around it was removed. That symmetrical smudge is what the entire ceiling looked like until the late 1990s, when decades of tobacco and nicotine residue were washed away. According to Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders, MTA officials begrudgingly left the patch as a constant before-and-after reminder.
THE CRAB EXTENDS ITS CLAW, AS IF TO REMOVE THE OFFENDING RECTANGLE (TOP), WHICH REMAINEDAS A BEFORE-AND-AFTER REMINDER OF THE RESTORATION.
IF THE SKY CEILING IS THE BIG MISTAKE, WHAT’S THE LITTLE ONE?
Okay, it’s not exactly a mistake, but the original blueprints for the Main Concourse called for matching east and west marble stairways modeled on the grand staircase of the Palais Garnier, the elegant Paris opera house. Only the west staircase was installed, however. Several theories survive as to why its counterpart was not. The most logical suggests that the shanties, tenements, and industrial buildings that dotted the East Side then offered little lure to pedestrians and that the East Balcony was supposed to have been the lobby for the unbuilt office tower. The staircase was belatedly completed in 1998, when the terminal was renovated, prompting a debate over whether a restored landmark should precisely mirror what existed before or what was originally proposed. The east stairway varies slightly from the original version as a subtle signal to architectural historians and to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires 11-inch-wide treads and handrails that meet strict specifications.
WHAT THE WEST BALCONY LOOKED LIKE BEFORE THE 1990S RESTORATION. MICHAEL JORDAN’S STEAK HOUSE OPENED AT RIGHT.
SO WHERE’S THE SECRET STAIRCASE?
Hint: It’s a little like the kiosk that Graham Greene’s Third Man disappears into in postwar Vienna. In the center of the circular marble and brass pagoda that serves as an information booth is a spiral staircase. It leads to the information booth on the terminal’s Lower Level.
PASSENGERS A
ND PASSERSBY SURROUNDING THE INFORMATION BOOTH TYPICALLY SEEM TO BE IN PERPETUAL MOTION. INSIDE, CUSTOMER SERVICE REP VALERIE BRATHWAITE.
HOW CAN THE TRAIN BOARDS BE WRONG? THEY LIST THE DESTINATION, TRACK NUMBER, AND DEPARTURE TIME, SAME AS IN THE OFFICIAL TIMETABLE.
All true, except for one vital fact that the railroad prefers not to tell passengers. In the old days, until 1985, when the departure time approached, conductors would activate a light to signal the gateman to close the gates at the entrance to the platform from the concourse. The railroad did away with those years ago, in part to save labor. Nowadays, tardy passengers can rush down the platform and still catch their train. Especially when, to accommodate stragglers, Grand Central’s trains typically leave one minute later than the departure time listed on the train boards and in the timetable.
SPEAKING OF TIME, HOW BIG IS THE CLOCK ON THE SOUTH FAÇADE?
So big that when you’re standing behind it, you can open up a window where the VI is and peer down Park Avenue. The clock is 13 feet in diameter. While it has been described as the largest display of Tiffany glass, Tiffany & Co. says it cannot confirm that claim.
DOES ANYONE LIVE AT GRAND CENTRAL AND LIST 89 EAST 42ND STREET AS THEIR ADDRESS?
No, unless you count any remaining “mole people” below it and train crews that occasionally sack out in bunk rooms. Nor did the financier John W. Campbell live there. He installed a corner office in 1923 that re-created a 13th-century Florentine palazzo. It was restored, after having been reincarnated in various lesser forms, including as a signalman’s office and small jail for miscreants arrested by the Metro-North Police, since Campbell died in 1957.
Campbell was born in 1880, lived on Cumberland Avenue in a Brooklyn neighborhood now known as Fort Greene, and, without attending college, became senior executive and later president of his father’s credit-reference firm, Credit Clearing House, which specialized in garment industry finances and later merged with Dun & Bradstreet. In 1920, he was named to the board of the New York Central and later became chairman of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (now PATH). Among his other quirks, he hated to wear socks and he insisted that his pants never be wrinkled, so he hung them in his humidor while he worked at his desk in his underwear. He kept a steel safe in the fireplace.
While the 3,500-square-foot office was renovated in 1999 into a bar known as the Campbell Apartment (and included a pipe organ, a piano, a bathroom, and a kitchen), Campbell and his wife actually lived a few blocks away at 270 Park Avenue and later at the Westchester Country Club in Rye.
JOHN CAMPBELL MAY HAVE SLEPT THERE OCCASIONALLY, BUT HE DIDN’T LIVE THERE. HIS “APARTMENT” HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED INTO A TONY BAR.
THE FINANCIER JOHN W. CAMPBELL RE-CREATED A 13TH-CENTURY FLORENTINE PALAZZO AS HIS OFFICE.
CAN YOU RENT THE TERMINAL FOR PRIVATE EVENTS?
Vanderbilt Hall, the former main waiting room just south of the Main Concourse on the terminal’s south side, is available. Five gold chandeliers hang from the 48-foot ceiling, and, Metro-North notes, their “light can be modified to create the ambience your event requires.” The starting price for renting all 12,000 square feet for a one-time event: $25,000.
ARE THERE REALLY SPECIAL PLACES TO WHISPER AND TO KISS?
Technically, you can do either anywhere, but you might feel less self-conscious in the designated areas. The so-called Kissing Gallery (apparently so dubbed by a rewrite man for the New York Herald), near Tracks 39 to 42, is where arriving passengers on long-distance trains, including the 20th Century Limited, greeted friends and relatives. It is formally known as the Biltmore Room because it is under the old Biltmore Hotel, now the Bank of America Building. The 65-by-80-foot room will become the connection to the Main Concourse for Long Island Rail Road commuters.
Pssst. Can you keep a secret? Not if you reveal it in the Whispering Gallery, an acoustical quirk of architecture at the foot of the ramps leading to the Oyster Bar. The vaulted ceiling was designed by Rafael Guastavino, a Valencian architect who patented a design for interlocking terra-cotta tile to form self-supporting arches. Stand at the foot of one arch facing the wall and station someone diagonally at the other end. Even when you whisper, your voice travels along the parabolic curve of the ceiling and can be heard at the other end. Histories of Grand Central don’t reveal whether Guastavino deliberately planned the reverberating effect or who discovered it.
AN ACOUSTICAL QUIRK SENDS EVEN A HUSHED WHISPER HURTLING ACROSS THE PARABOLIC CEILING NEAR THE OYSTER BAR.
IS IT TRUE THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE SUNSPOTS IN THE TERMINAL?
In midafternoon, when the sun shines straight up Park Avenue, place a white sheet of paper on the floor of the Main Concourse. The curlicued spaces in the semicircular grills on the terminal’s southern façade can produce the same effect as a pinhole camera, reflecting an image of the sun that is 8 to 12 inches wide—complete with dark blemishes denoting sunspots.
SOMEONE SAID GRAND CENTRAL HAS THE “SAFEST” RESTROOM IN THE WORLD. C’MON.
Only if you define it as being safe from a speeding locomotive, then this is the place. The Lower Level restroom on the far western side of the terminal is buttressed by a crash wall several feet of concrete thick. It’s adjacent to the lower loop tracks on which incoming trains could turn around and head outbound.
THE ELEVATOR BUTTONS IN THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE MAIN CONCOURSE ARE A MYSTERY. SOLVE IT.
After the trains, more people at Grand Central are transported on the escalators and 10 historic elevators than by any other means. Those four corners were intended as the lobby for the tower that Reed & Stem originally envisioned, just as the balconies were to serve as the tower’s vestibules. For unexplained reasons, pushing E will get you to the balcony level (possibly referring to entresol, French for esplanade, or for express), U to the upper or Main Concourse level, L to the Lower Level or Dining Concourse, and P to the Lower Level platforms. The numbered buttons are reserved for Metro-North employees. The seventh floor, location of the situation room for emergencies and of the Fleet Department, which keeps track of all 1,300 engines and passenger cars, is unlisted.
THAT TAKES CARE OF GOING UP. WHAT ABOUT GOING DOWN? WHAT’S SO SECRET ABOUT THAT UNDERGROUND ROOM?
Don’t mention it, even in the Whispering Gallery. Ninety feet below the Lower Level is a vast room known as M-42, which is accessible by a single elevator and a mazy staircase and was featured in a World War II navy training film as the safest place in New York in case of an atomic attack. Rows of transformers produce a one-note hum and convert alternating current to the direct current that powers Metro-North trains. At one end of the room are two ancient giant rotary converters, which the modern transformers replaced. The old converters were rumored to have been targeted during World War II by Nazi saboteurs seeking to cripple the terminal and disrupt American troop embarkations along the East Coast. (German saboteurs who landed by U-boat in Amagansett, Long Island, in 1942, and were seized soon after, did indeed visit Grand Central for a rendezvous at the information booth—“possibly New York’s most popular meeting place,” according to one account—and to visit a newsreel theater to catch up on current events and to watch recently released films of the previous December’s attack on Pearl Harbor. While there was no direct evidence that M-42 was their objective, the FBI said that among their targets were “spots where railroads could be most effectively disabled.”) Armed guards patrolled entrances to the room.
Blasted out of mica-peppered Manhattan schist, which forms the island’s bedrock, this is the deepest basement in New York City—deeper than the cellar of the World Trade Center and the bullion vaults at the Federal Reserve Bank downtown. It’s poised to lose that title, though. When the Long Island Rail Road access tunnels are completed around 2019, the lower commuter platform will be 140 feet below street level and more than 90 feet below the existing Lower Level Metro-North track. Forty-seven escalators and 22 elevators will carry passengers to street level, a journey that is expected to take about four mi
nutes.
NOW, WHAT ABOUT THAT OTHER UNDERGROUND SECRET, THE RAIL SIDING?
It’s known to Metro-North employees as Track 61, and myths abound as to its origin, history, and contemporary relevance. Some of the myths are actually true.
Originally, the spur ran beneath a railroad power plant, the railway branch of the YMCA, and a warehouse for the Adams Express Company. Those buildings, each less than two decades old, were razed to make room for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which was built on the square block bounded by Park and Lexington Avenues and East 49th and 50th Streets (the F & M Schaeffer brewery was on the next block where St. Bartholomew’s Church now stands). The two wide platforms used by the powerhouse and the express company remained.
If you’re traveling on a track near the eastern perimeter of the train yards near 49th Street, you may see what looks like a rusted blue boxcar (parked on Track 63). Depending on the telling, the boxcar either carried the presidential automobile for FDR or is an otherwise nondescript maintenance car abandoned years ago. The storied spur is directly under the Waldorf and is accessible by a special freight elevator (which opens onto 49th Street, just east of the Waldorf garage, with another stairway on the 50th Street side), apparently placed there for the convenience and privacy of VIP guests to provide direct access to a train platform from the hotel.
How often it’s been used for that purpose is debatable (although the platform was where the Santa Fe Railroad showed off its red, gold, and silver streamlined 6,000-horsepower locomotive in 1946, and where Filene’s staged a fashion show in 1948 and Andy Warhol hosted an “underground party” in 1965).