#GRAND CENTRAL STATION MOVIE#

#GRAND CENTRAL STATION MOVIE#

In itвЂ™s early years, people flocked to the building to take in a movie at its theater, dine at its restaurants and cafes or learn about the history of railroads at an on-site museum. This allowed both local commuters and long distance travellers to quickly get from track level to city streets, without lugging luggage up and down crowded steps the feature was soon adopted in transportation centers around the world.Д¬BS News staff at CBS Studio 41, Grand Central Terminal studios, 1956.ДЇor much of its history the terminal has served as an important cultural hub for the city of New York. Another innovation was the extensive use of ramps, rather than stairs, throughout the station. These bulbs remained a trademark of the station for nearly a century, until a massive retrofitting of the building in 2008, which required six-full time employees to replace the traditional bulbs with energy and cost efficient fluorescent ones. When it first opened, every one of the stations chandeliers and lighting fixtures featured bare, exposed light bulbs-more than 4,000 of them. In fact, their pride greatly influenced the stationвЂ™s interior designs. The Vanderbilts were also immensely proud of Grand CentralвЂ™s status as one of the worldвЂ™s first all-electric buildings. ItвЂ™s 70-acre compound had 32 miles of track, which fed into 46 tracks and 30 passenger platforms, making it nearly twice the size of the recently-opened (and original) Pennsylvania Station built by the VanderbiltвЂ™s railroad rivals. The building of Grand Central was the largest construction project in New YorkвЂ™s history up to that time. When the new station went completely underground, it opened up valuable air rights on the streets above, and the resulting business boom created the midtown Manhattan we know today.Д®xcavation for Grand Central Terminal in 1908. Grand CentralвЂ™s design also transformed Manhattan real estateвЂ™s practices. Sensing the shift in the political winds, the Vanderbilt family announced plans to construct a new, state-of-the-art station that would utilize electricity, not steam. When an inquiry revealed that the noxious clouds emanating from the station area had blinded its driver, reformers and politicians acted swiftly, announcing plans to prohibit steam engines from operating in the city. On January 8, 1902, a commuter train traveling from suburban Westchester County crashed into another train waiting in the stationвЂ™s entrance tunnel, killing 15 passengers. Hall & Son/The New York Historical Society/Getty ImagesДЇor decades, New Yorkers had complained about the unhealthy soot and smog coughed up by the steam locomotives crisscrossing the city, but it took a fatal accident to create lasting change.

Grand central station