Dusty Buildings

When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.

Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.

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One type of public space budling, wherein beauty was once an integral component, was the local train station. Over the last century, these types of buildings became increasingly utilitarian with keeping costs down – not to mention ugly post WW2 styles – leading to less focus on art and style.

We do have examples of the beautiful before-time that remain with us, and one of those is located in New York City. If your train station doesn’t have about 15 sub-articles on individual parts of its design and the art it displays, then why are you even building it? Should public spaces be sacred spaces? We believed it once. May we believe it again.

Grand Central Terminal

If you’re on a tour of NYC, and impressive buildings are your thing, then you’re likely to make a stop here. It’s hard to fathom a culture wherein no expense is spared to make the train station a tourism destination in its own right (rather than a location from which you might leave to set out on your destination.) However, that was the culture of the Western World for most of its history, right up until the end of the Second World War.

What makes the Grand Central Terminal (also known as Grand Central Station) so special? Why would you go visit the place that takes you to other places? Let’s find out.

(via wiki)

Architecture

Grand Central Terminal was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Reed and Stem, which handled 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 monumental spaces as well as meticulously crafted detail, especially on its facade, which 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 2012, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated it a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark; one year later, historian David Cannadine described it as one of the most majestic buildings of the twentieth century.

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.

As first built, the station house measured about 722 feet (220 m) along Vanderbilt Avenue (120 feet longer than originally planned) and 300 feet (91 m) on 42nd Street. Floors above the first story are set back about 50 feet, making the rest of the station house originally measure 290 by 670 feet. The station is about 125 feet (38 m) tall.

Structure and materials

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.

Facade

The terminal’s main facade is situated on the building’s southern side, facing 42nd Street. It includes a low first story supporting the main portion of the facade, which was key to the architects’ vision of the building as a gateway to the city. Its trio of 60-by-30-foot arched windows are interspersed with ten fluted Doric columns that are partially attached to the granite walls behind them, though they are detached from one another.^[216] Each window bay is separated by a double pair of these columns, which are in turn separated by a smaller bay with narrow windows. The set of windows resembles an ancient Roman triumphal arch, while the column placement is reminiscent of the Louvre Colonnade.^[219] The facade was also designed to complement that of the New York Public Library Main Branch, another Beaux-Arts edifice on nearby Fifth Avenue.

The facade includes several large works of art. At the top of the south facade is an elaborate entablature featuring a 13-foot-wide (4.0 m) clock set in the middle of a round broken pediment, flanked by overflowing cornucopias. Above the clock is the Glory of Commerce sculptural group, a 48-foot-wide (15 m) work 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 8.5-foot (2.6 m) 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.

Interior

Main Concourse

The Main Concourse, on the terminal’s upper platform level, is located in the geographical center of the station building. The cavernous concourse measures 275 ft (84 m) long by 120 ft (37 m) wide by 125 ft (38 m) high; a total of about 35,000 square feet (3,300 m²).^[34] Its vastness was meant to evoke the terminal’s “grand” status.

Iconography

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.^[229]

The overlapping letters “G”, “C”, and “T” are sculpted into multiple places in the terminal, including in friezes atop several windows above the terminal’s ticket office. The symbol was designed with the “T” resembling an upside-down anchor, intended as a reference to Cornelius Vanderbilt’s commercial beginnings in shipping and ferry businesses. In 2017, the MTA based its new logo for the terminal on the engraved design; MTA officials said its black and gold colors have long been associated with the terminal. The spur of the letter “G” has a depiction of a railroad spike. The 2017 logo succeeded one created by the firm Pentagram for the terminal’s centennial in 2013. It depicted the Main Concourse’s ball clock set to 7:13, or 19:13 using a 24-hour clock, referencing the terminal’s completion in 1913. Both logos omit the word “terminal” in its name, in recognition to how most people refer to the building.

Influence

Some of the buildings most closely modeled on Grand Central’s design were designed by its two architecture firms. Warren and Wetmore went on to design many notable train stations, including the Poughkeepsie station in Poughkeepsie, New York; Union Station in Winnipeg, Manitoba; the Yonkers station in Yonkers, New York; Union Station in Houston; and Michigan Central Station in Detroit (also co-designed by Reed & Stem). Reed & Stem’s successor firm Stem & Fellheimer designed Union Station in Utica, New York, which also has resemblances to Grand Central Terminal.

This building is incredible (and if you’re paying attention to our series, this is yet another building that uses Indiana limestone on its facade.) I’m not sure that words and pictures do justice to the location, so I have embedded a walking tour video below. The background sounds from the video add a lot to the experience.