1.2 - Grand Central Station
The Astaires Arrive in New York in January 1905
The Grand Central Station, where the Austerlitzes would have arrived on their steam-powered train, was in its third incarnation. The original Grand Central Depot, built by Cornelius “The Commodore” Vanderbilt for $6.4 million, opened on November 1, 1871. Designed by John B. Snook, who also designed New York’s first department store (A.T. Stewart’s at 280 Broadway), the massive three-story building in American Second Empire style featured five mansard roofs and a 652-foot-long arch-ribbed-vault train shed. At the time it was the largest interior space on the North American continent (Roberts 53) and contained three separate waiting rooms for the 85 daily trains from three railroads that shared the building: the New Haven, the Harlem, and the New York Central (Condit vol. 1: 89).
Less than 20 years later, ideas were developed for revising and enlarging the station, but by 1896 these narrow plans were abandoned for a more comprehensive design produced by architect Bernard Lee Gilbert, who had designed the Tower Building at 50 Broadway, the first steel-framed curtain-wall structure, commonly thought to be New York’s first skyscraper (Roberts 65). Gilbert turned the three-story building into a six-story neo-Renaissance structure covered in stucco and artificial stone. As the century drew to a close, daily traffic at Grand Central had grown to 350 trains and more than a thousand cars (Condit vol. 1: 118). By 1899 the plans were again changed with a revised design by architect Samuel Huckel Jr. Construction on the new building began on October 23, 1899. Four dome tourelles replaced the curving Mansard roofs of the old building. Three cast-iron eagles faced the street at the base of each of these domed clock towers.[1] Dressed stone masonry replaced the original stone, brick and cast iron on the street elevations (Condit vol. 1: 123).
Even in January 1905, as the Austerlitzes were pulling into what New York Central advertised as the new Grand Central Station, plans were underway for the grandest station of all. Driven by expanding rail traffic, competition from the recently announced Pennsylvania Station and its Hudson River tunnels, and the replacement of steam engines with electric locomotives, New York Central was developing plans for a monumental Beaux Arts edifice. Demolition of existing buildings on the expanded site had begun in June 1903 (Condit vol. 2: 61). On December 23, 1904, only a few weeks before the Astaires’ arrival, chief engineer William Wilgus had submitted plans to the municipal Board of Estimate for what the editor of the Street Railway Journal called a proposal “so elaborate and generous as regards facilities as to eclipse anything heretofore planned for terminal facilities in any other cities” (Condit vol. 2: 66).
Fred’s memory of his arrival in New York (though faulty about it’s being Pennsylvania Station) focused on speed and size: “The New York attitude as ever was to hurry whether you had to or not. We soon found that out, so we hurried too” (Astaire 16). The vastness of the station’s interior surpassed anything they would have experienced in Omaha. Unlike the original depot, the new Grand Central Station combined the formerly three separate waiting rooms into one spacious facility 100 x 200 feet at the floor level, covered by a steel-ribbed, skylighted vault 50 feet above the floor (Condit vol. 1: 123). The interior was elegantly appointed with tile floors, tile and marble wainscoting, and cherry and oak paneling and furniture. All baggage-handling facilities for the three railways were also consolidated, with an outgoing baggage room on the complex’s east side and incoming on the west (Condit vol. 1: 122-123).
[i]When the depot was demolished in 1910, the eagles were removed and dispersed to various locations. One went to the William K. Vanderbilt II’s estate called Centerport on Long Island. Two of the original dozen have returned to the Grand Central Station, one above the southwest entrance at 42nd and Vanderbilt and another at Lexington and 43rd. (Linetskaya)
SOURCES
Astaire, Fred. Steps in Time. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959.
Condit, Carl W. The Port of New York. 2 vols. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Linetskaya, Yelena. Eagles on the Roof - Grand Central Station - Part 3. June 2013. 16 February 2019. <http://www.bigapplesecrets.com/2013/06/eagles-on-roof-grand-central-terminal.html>.
Nevins, Deborah. Grand Central Terminal: City Within a City. Ed. Deborah Nevins. New York: Municipal Art Society of New York, 1982.
Official Guide of the Railways, The. New York: National Railway Publications Co., 1905.
Roberts, Sam. Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2013.