Grand Central Terminal: Railroads, Engineering, and Architecture in New York City (review)

In Grand Central Terminal, Kurt Schlichting, a professor of sociology at Fairfield University, tells the colorful story of a great railway station, emphasizing its significance as "a triumph of technology" (p. 83). Four chapters cover, respectively, the terminal's predecessor, its engineering, its architecture, and its influence on the surrounding midtown Manhattan neighborhood.

Late in his career, Cornelius Vanderbilt shifted his focus from shipping to assemble, in short order, a sprawling railroad empire that made him the richest man in the world. By 1867, he had gained control of the New York Central, linking New York and Buffalo. By 1869 the Vanderbilt system stretched from New York to Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. Only the New York Central enjoyed direct rail access to Manhattan (rival lines terminated across the Hudson River in New Jersey, requiring passengers to complete their journeys by ferry), and under Vanderbilt's direction the first Grand Central Station, a mammoth Second Empire-style confection, opened on 42nd Street in 1871. Behind the "Imperial Façade" (as Lewis Mumford called it) was a great iron-and-glass train shed, two hundred feet wide and enclosing seventeen tracks, which became a tourist attraction in its own right. But by 1886 the largest passenger station in the world had reached capacity, and by 1899 the New York Times was calling the "pretentiously named" station "a cruel disgrace to the metropolis and its inhabitants" (p. 53).

Schlichting's second chapter, "The Engineer's Grand Central," recounts the planning and construction of the present terminal, focusing on the contributions of William J. Wilgus, the talented chief engineer of the New York Central. It was Wilgus who proposed expanding vertically: building two underground terminals—an upper level for long-distance trains and a lower level for commuter service—and financing the improvements by using the "air rights" above the terminal's yards and tracks to build revenue-producing buildings.

To comply with a ban on the operation of steam locomotives south of the Harlem River after 1 July 1908, Wilgus recommended direct-current electrical power distributed by a third rail. With electric traction expert Frank J. Sprague, he developed and patented such a transmission system, with the third rail enclosed on three sides by a wooden cover—a "simple, elegant technical solution" (p. 93), writes Schlichting, to the problem of worker safety. Electrification, completed in 1907, garnered favorable publicity for the railroad until an express train en route to White Plains derailed, killing twenty and leading to Wilgus's resignation midproject.

The third chapter, "The Architect's Grand Central," tells the unsavory story of the architectural competition, won by Reed and Stem of St. Paul but later upended when William K. Vanderbilt insisted that the Minnesota firm join forces with Warren and Wetmore of New York. Reed and Stem's contract was later canceled, giving Warren and Wetmore sole control. Whitney Warren reconceived the terminal building (which was originally to have incorporated a twelve-story office tower) as a low-rise, Beaux Arts palace. The result was a triumphal entryway crowned by heroic statuary at whose heart lay a constellation-bedecked Grand Concourse destined to become a part of the city's mythos. Following a decade of construction, Grand Central Terminal opened in February 1913.

The last chapter, "New York's Grand Central," describes the terminal's impact on the "Grand Central Zone," the thirty-block area above the underground train yard, which gradually filled with new hotels, apartments, and office buildings. An epilogue covers familiar ground: the decline of rail travel and terminal maintenance; the 1968 merger that created the short-lived Penn Central, which soon eyed Grand Central Terminal as an appropriate foundation for a fifty-five-story office building; the resulting public outcry; and the landmark 1978 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that...