Historian David Cannadine
charts the fall and rise of the architectural gem in the centre of New
York, and a symbol of America's gilded age.
Exactly 100 years ago this month, in February 1913, one of
the 20th Century's most elaborate and majestic buildings was inaugurated
in New York - an extraordinary amalgam of technological sophistication
and architectural wonder.
When I first saw it, in the early 1970s, I was completely
overwhelmed and blown away, and 40 years later, it never fails to lift
my spirits when I'm lucky enough to set foot there.
It was - and still is - located at the very
epicentre of midtown Manhattan on 42nd Street and Park Avenue. It was
originally built for the New York Central Railroad, owned by the
Vanderbilts, and it was formally styled Grand Central Terminal, because
all the railway lines ended there. But it's always been more
colloquially and affectionately known as Grand Central Station, or even
as New York's living room.
At the time of its construction, Grand Central was acclaimed
as an engineering marvel. In the subterranean depths of Manhattan, a
huge space was carved out, where trains could be boarded from platforms
at two different levels, which were approached by gently sloping ramps
rather than inconvenient stairs, and in terms of lighting and power, it
was one of the first railroad stations to be all-electric.
But Grand Central was also architecturally magnificent.
Above ground there arose a spectacular beaux arts creation,
all marble and chandeliers and sculpture and glass, the centrepiece of
which was a huge and lofty passenger concourse, which drew the eyes of
awe-struck passengers heavenwards, where they could marvel at a vast,
barrelled ceiling, painted blue and decorated with the signs of the
zodiac.
The zodiac set in gold leaf constellations
Three years earlier, and 10 blocks to the south, the
Pennsylvania Railroad Station had been constructed by the rival
Pennsylvania Railroad Company, occupying all the land between Seventh
and Eighth Avenues from 31st Street to 33rd. And Penn, as it became
generally known, was indeed a train station, not a terminal, for it was
the key stopping-off point on what we would now term the East Coast
Corridor, the route extending from Boston, via New York and
Philadelphia, to Washington DC.
Designed by the New York firm of McKim, Mead
and White, and also in the prevailing beaux arts style, it was
constructed in pink granite, with columns and sculpture aplenty. The
main waiting room, modelled on the baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome,
was one of the largest indoor spaces in the US.
These two great temples to trains were constructed in the
early years of the 20th Century, when America's railroads were at the
peak of their power and prestige. They tied together a nation that had
survived the Civil War, that was transcontinental in its reach from sea
to shining sea, and that seemed boundless in its aspirations.
Here was the world's first "billion dollar country", a new
industrial giant - in one guise throwing up millionaires aplenty in what
was rightly termed "the gilded age", in another erupting suddenly on to
the world stage in the aftermath of its success in the Spanish-American
War. Thus began what would soon become "the American century" and, at
least at the beginning, railroads were both the sinews and the symbols
of this sudden and remarkable transformation.
No city epitomised the wealth, the energy, the dynamism and
the aspirations of early 20th Century America more fully or completely
than New York, which now became the first great global metropolis of the
western hemisphere.
The station's Mercury statue and the equally iconic Chrysler building
But it was already more than just that, for by the 1900s, it
had become, pre-eminently, the one city in the world where it seemed as
though the future was already happening, as had earlier been true of
London in the 1800s, and as is true in our own time of Shanghai and
Singapore.
So it was entirely fitting that Penn Station
and Grand Central were conceived and constructed on the most lavish
scale, as triumphal departure points for those travelling great
distances across a land of teeming possibilities, and as monumental
entrances for those many people who were visiting New York to get a
glimpse of the future.
All this meant that in the America of Edith Wharton and Henry
James, travelling by train, and arriving and leaving great cities and
great stations by train, was an ennobling experience and an exhilarating
adventure. But within half a century, the picture had changed
dramatically, for while the US continued its seemingly inexorable
journey to global greatness and unprecedented affluence, it no longer
did so on the trains.
By the 1950s, they were being superseded by the plane and the
automobile. The railroad companies were losing money and would soon be
heading for bankruptcy, and the once-proud stations were left to moulder
and decay as anachronistic and expensive behemoths, standing in the way
of modernity, and progress - and real estate development.
Accordingly, in 1963, just a year after the destruction of
the great arch that had formed the ceremonial entrance to Euston Station
in London, the soaring roofs and the granite halls of New York's
Pennsylvania Station were reduced to rubble. All of the columns and much
of the sculpture were unceremoniously dumped into the New Jersey
wastelands on the other side of the Hudson River.
Golden age: The elegant Oyster Bar at Grand Central was restored in the 1980s
McKim, Mead and White's masterpiece was replaced by a dingy
subterranean successor, bereft of light or character, above which was
constructed an unprepossessing sports and entertainment complex, housing
the relocated Madison Square Garden.
The contrast with the power and the glory of
the majestic edifice that had been there before could scarcely have been
more dispiriting, and the great architectural historian Vince Scully
described it unforgettably. In earlier times, he said, you had entered
New York like a god, but now you scuttled in like a rat.
I've always regretted never having seen the original Penn
Station, and when it was destroyed, it seemed only a matter of time
before Grand Central went the same way. Ever since the 1950s, there had
been proposals to tear it down, and soon after Penn Station was
demolished, a scheme was drawn up to put a massive skyscraper on the
site.
But although the property developers were determined to carry
all before them, the climate of opinion had begun to change. Many New
Yorkers, urged on by influential cultural critics such as Lewis Mumford,
had initially opposed and subsequently deplored the destruction of Penn
Station as a wanton act of civic irresponsibility and cultural
philistinism.
And so a public campaign was launched, supported by
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, to ensure that Grand Central would not go
the way of Penn Station. The preservationists' battle was long and hard
and expensive, but they fought it all the way up to the Supreme Court,
where they finally prevailed in 1978.
Penn Station today is dingy and characterless, unlike its original incarnation
And so Grand Central survived - though in the ensuing decade,
it can hardly be said to have prospered. The once-fine fabric
deteriorated, the great ceiling was darkened by soot and smoke, and the
place became a Mecca for many of New York's homeless. But in 1988, a
major refurbishment scheme was announced, and Grand Central was restored
to its former glory, where the gods once more reign supreme and
triumphant in its centenary year.
And although Penn Station can never, alas, be recreated,
there are plans to convert the neighbouring post office building -
another imposing structure, also designed by McKim, Mead and White -
into a new passenger concourse which might once again invest the
experience of train travel with dignity and grandeur.
For the time being, we are still scuttling about like rats,
but at Pennsylvania Station the gods may yet return and there is even a
campaign afoot to bring back London's Euston Arch.
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