New York City's magnificent Grand Central Terminal turns 100 this weekend. Here is a nugget of information for every year of its existence.
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The Grand Central Terminal in the 1920s
1. First things first: it is officially Grand Central Terminal, and NOT Grand Central Station. However, many people do still refer to it as the latter, including the Canadian author Elizabeth Smart, who wrote the prose poetry novel “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” .
2. There are, however, two existing grand central stations, so perhaps she was right after all. The U.S. Post Office station next door is also known as Grand Central Station. The name is also sometimes used to refer to the Grand Central – 42nd Street subway station, which serves the terminal.
3. Outside the station, the clock in front of the Grand Central facade facing 42nd Street contains the world's largest example of Tiffany glass.
4. All levels, floors, and platforms within Grand Central can be reached by lifts or ramps. It was billed as the first great “stairless” station, a design considered necessary for train passengers with large trunks and train cases.
5. A once secret basement, widely referred to as M42, lies under the Terminal, containing converters used to supply electric currents to run the trains from the Terminal.
6. During the Second World War, German military intelligence reportedly learned of the M42, and sent two spies to sabotage it. The spies were arrested by the FBI before they could strike.
7. For more than 20 years, the attic of the east wing contained an art school and gallery space called the Grand Central School of Art, which was founded in 1922.
8. Among the directors of the school of Art was John Singer Sargent, one of the best known portrait painters of his generation.
9. Going Hollywood was the first of many films shot at the terminal. The 1933 movie starred Marion Davies and Bing Crosby.
10. One of the terminal’s most striking features is the astronomical mural on the ceiling of the main concourse ceiling, which shows the Mediterranean sky during the October to March zodiac and features 2,500 stars.
11. Despite its magnificence, the mural is by no means perfect. The stars are slightly displaced, and the sky is actually in reverse. It was reportedly a commuting amateur astronomer who noticed the error in the same year the terminal opened. Officials tried to explain that it represented God’s view. However, it seems more likely that workers had mistakenly looked at the diagram on the floor and done their work from there.
12. As many as 50 painters worked on the mural, trying to ensure that there was no variation in colour tone. They also experimented to find just the proper shade of blue.
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13. Grand Central it is the largest train station in the world by number of tracks and number of platforms
14. The station is one of the world’s most noted Beaux-Arts landmarks. One of the design team Whitney Warren (a cousin of the Vanderbilts – the family whose fortune stemmed from railways, and were highly influential in the creation of Grand Central – spent ten years at the École des Beaux Arts). Many naturally credit the terminal’s look to him.
15. The information booth is a perennial meeting place of the station, most noted for its magnificent clock. Each of the four clock faces is made from opal, and auction houses including Sotheby's and Christie's estimate its worth at more than $10 million (£6.3m)
16. The information booth is also known for having a "secret" door – although rather less secret now it has a reference on Wikipedia – leading to a staircase down to a lower level information booth.
17. When it is open, staff at the information booth deal with more than 1,000 questions an hour.
18. On top of the information booth clock, there is an acorn. It’s the Vanderbilt family symbol: “From the acorn grows the mighty oak.” Acorns and oak leaf clusters have engravings in the marble and on lighting fixtures.
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19. An eagle with a 13-foot wingspan that once graced the former Grand Central Depot is now perched on Grand Central Terminal. The eagle was discovered after new owners moved into a house in Bronxville in 1995. The couple contacted the Metro-North Railroad and asked if it might be used for the restoration.
20. September 11 has not been a lucky date for the Terminal. Obviously on that day in 2001, the terminal had one of its most fraught days ever. However, it was also the date in 1976 that group of Croatian nationalists planted a bomb in a locker at Grand Central Terminal. A bomb squad specialist was killed and 30 more wounded.
21. Grand Central was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, giving it official protection from developers who wished to demolish it.
22. Robin Williams’s character in the film “The Fisher King” encounters the woman of his dreams in Grand Central Terminal.
23. There is a train platform that has a concealed entrance, along with a lift that goes straight up to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. This is the "secret" platform, number 61, and was once used to convey President Franklin D. Roosevelt directly into the hotel.
24. In North by Northwest, Cary Grant makes his escape from New York City in a sequence filmed at night inside the real station.
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25. In terms of total area, Grand Central is thought to be one of the most successful shopping centres in the USA.
26. When Grand Central was renovated in the 1990s, the ceiling was hidden under a layer of black grime, thought to be from coal and diesel smoke. Closer inspection revealed it to be tar and nicotine from tobacco. A single dark patch is still there (above the Michael Jordan Steakhouse) as a reminder of the grime that once was.
27. The oldest business in Grand Central is the Oyster Bar, which first opened its doors the same year as the terminal itself in 1913.
28. The Oyster Bar carries up to 30 varieties of oysters each day.
29. Some language historians believe the phrase “red carpet treatment” evolved at the Grand Central Terminal. Its use is thought to have entered popular vernacular through the luxurious 20th Century Limited express passenger train from New York to Chicago. Passengers used to walk down a crimson carpet, a ritual only done for those departing from New York.
30. The Biltmore Room was where the 20th Century Limited train used to arrive. Passengers – often numbering celebrities and significant public figures – would descend from the train and greet their loved ones here. For that reason, it became known as the “Kissing Room”.
31. There is "whispering gallery" in Grand Central on the dining concourse near the Oyster Bar . Low ceramic arches create acoustics that can make a quiet noise sound much louder.
32. The original station on the site was known as the Grand Central Depot, the brainchild of Cornelius Vanderbilt (see also fact 14), the American industrialist and philanthropist who built his wealth in shipping and railroads. It was finished in 1871.
33. In its second incarnation as "Grand Central Station," the most prominent feature was an enormous train shed, made of glass and steel, which some said rivalled the Eiffel Tower and Crystal Palace.
34. A catastrophic steam train collision on January 8, 1902 in the Park Avenue tunnel killed 15 people and injured 37. The ensuing public outcry increased demand for electric trains and precipitated plans for the new terminal.
35. In the ten years of Grand Central Terminal’s excavation and construction, rail service continued uninterrupted.
36. Grand Central Terminal officially opened to great fanfare at 12:01 am on Sunday, February 2, 1913, and more than 150,000 people visited the new terminal on its opening day.
37. In 1947, an estimated 65 million people – or around 40 per cent of the entire population of the United States – travelled by train via Grand Central Terminal.
38. In 1967, the Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York City, which was created in response to the destruction of Pennsylvania Station – designated Grand Central Terminal as a landmark, subject to the protection of law.
39. The staircases in Grand Central were based on the designs of the Paris Opera House.
40. In the original architectural plans there were two grand staircases, but there was only one standing when the Grand Central opened, for reasons that remain unclear. Perhaps funds ran dry, perhaps builders decided there was nothing worth visiting on the eastern wing. The western one is the original; the eastern was added during the renovation in the 1990s.
41. Interestingly, the new eastern staircase is actually a few inches shorter than its western counterpart, and with a few less flourishes.
42. Every day, more than 750,000 people pass through Grand Central, which is more than the entire population of Leeds, or roughly the population of San Francisco.
43. The terminal covers 48 acres from 42nd Street to 97th Street, encompassing 33 miles of track.
44. Each day, an estimated 10,000 people come into Grand Central to have lunch, and don’t a catch a train at all.
45. One of the original flash mob stunts happened within Grand Central. This clip shows more than 200 people stop completely still in the middle of the terminal out of the blue. Minutes later, they walk away.
46. The Lost and Found (lost property) at Grand Central receives more than 2,000 items every month. According to official statistics 80 per cent of the items are returned to the owners, apparently making it the best recovery rate of any Lost and Found in the world.
47. Items that have been handed in include an urn of cremated ashes and a barking basset hound. Both made it back to their respective owners.
48. All light bulbs in the original terminal were naked and prominently on display. This was a way of drawing attention to the fact the terminal was all electric, quite a noteworthy achievement in 1913.
49. It has been ranked as the sixth most visited tourist attraction in the world by Travel+Leisure magazine, with more than 21.5 million annual visitors.
50. Every clock in Grand Central is set by an atomic clock at a naval observatory in Maryland, which reportedly makes them accurate to with one second every 1.4 million years.
51. The basement in Grand Central is the deepest basement in New York City. Apparently a ten-story office could slip through the Main Concourse floor, and still not touch the basement floor of Grand Central.
52. Television and radio studios used to be on the third floor of Grand Central, making it a very common occurrence to see the likes of Groucho Marx and Bob Hope.
53. Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most prominent fans of the terminal. Apparently he always worked to make Grand Central look grand, shooting it in Technicolor where possible.
54. RKO Radio Pictures shot more films in Grand Central than any other studio. Stars in its films included Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple and John Wayne, and Jennifer Jones.
55. Grand Central was filmed in Technicolor for the first time in 1953. This was for the MGM movie “The Band Wagon” in which Fred Astaire got off the 20th Century Limited train and danced up Track 34.
56. In fact, almost every film featuring a train arriving at or departing from the terminal is shot from Track 34. This is due to it being one of the few platforms to have no columns.
56. At the busiest periods of construction, 10,000 people were working to the site, and work continued around the clock.
57. Despite its renown as a Beaux-Arts landmark, some credit Grand Central as one of the forerunners of modern architecture, especially for its glass catwalks. They provide ventilation, illumination, and transportation from one office tower to the next, giving weight to the idea of form following function, a trademark of modern architecture.
58. The statues around the clock on Grand Central’s south face represent Mercury, Hercules and Minerva, all considered apt gods to represent the railroads with their attributes of speed, strength and intellect.
59. At the time, this was considered the largest group of sculptures in the world, at 48 feet (14.6m) high.
60. The French artist Jules-Alexis Coutan was responsible for the design of the sculpture (known as “Transportation”). However, M. Coutan never visited the US, and the sculptures were carved by the John Donnelly company.
61. The largest newspaper recycling program under one roof in the USA is in operation at Grand Central. Apparently more than four tonnes of newsprint are recycled daily.
62. New cars used to be exhibited in Grand Central on turntables: the two models that were most often shown no longer exist: Oldsmobile and Rambler.
63. Broadcast studios, political rallies, art exhibits, and tightrope walks, have all taken place in Grand Central, a small taste of the many ways the public space has been used.
64. Someone called F. M. Lahm from the city of Yonkers in New York State is recorded as having bought the first ticket.
65. A large American flag is permanently draped in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, placed there a few days after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
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66. Grand Central subway station actually opened in 1904, a few years before the terminal. Designs for the terminal were required to incorporate links to the subway station.
67. Almost inevitably there has been a LEGO replica of the terminal, made of 5,000 bricks. It is being displayed in the terminal for the centenery celebrations.
68. In 1954, serious plans were mooted to replace Grand Central with an 80-storey tower, taller than the Empire State Building, plans that rumbled on in one form or another for decades.
69. The terminal’s display board became something of a New York institution, with its many displays would flapping furiously to show the ever changing arrivals and departures. It was an electromechanical display that displayed times and track numbers of arriving and departing trains.
70. William J. Wilgus is credited as the person responsible for the design and construction of the new Grand Central Terminal. The idea came to him “in a flash of light,” he recalled decades later, according to the New York Times.
71. On the original 17 acres bought by the railroad, 120 houses, three churches, two hospitals and an orphan asylum had to be obliterated, as would the stables, warehouses and other ancillary structures.
72. The New York Times said of the plans for the new terminal that: “in describing it, the superlative degree must be kept in constant use.”
73. The destruction of buildings to construct the Grand Central Terminal was the city’s largest individual demolition contract ever.
74. Apart from the trains, the most used form of transportation within Grand Central are the lifts, which make thousands of trips a day.
75. Nearly 3.2 million cubic yards of earth were excavated for the construction for the terminal, as well as rock to an average depth of 45 feet.
76. All the rubbish and debris was enough to fill almost 300 railway dump cars every day.
77. The terminal alone cost $43 million (£27m) to build, the equivalent of about $1 billion (£633m) today
78. The first train to leave the terminal was the Boston Express No. 2, which departed at 12.01am on February 2, 1913.
79. The first train to pull in at the terminal was a local train on the Harlem line.
80. Of the many shops at Grand Central, most are either private, small-scale businesses or small franchises. There are three exceptions: a Starbucks, a Rite Aid pharmacy and an Apple Store, the latter of which opened in December 2011.
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81. On its opening the New York Times described Grand Central as “not only the greatest station in the United States, but the greatest station, of any type, in the world.”
82. The finishing touches to Grand Central Terminal were not complete for several years after its official opening (the traffic viaduct did not open until 1919).
83. The Grand Central station that preceded the current terminal helped bring times into synch across the United States. In the mid-1800s, cities kept their own times. But with more people taking the train, railroad officials pushed for a national standard – to avoid collisions, among other things. On November 18, 1883, known as “the day with two noons,” at three minutes and 58 seconds past 12, the clock was wound back to noon again. Grand Central had started keeping standard time a few hours before.
84. A barbershop for men that existed at the terminal in 1913 boasted that the customer could be shaved “in any one of 30 languages.”
85. A man called Frank English has a very good claim to have taken more photos in Grand Central than anyone else. By his own estimation, he has taken at least 200,000 photos – unsurprising as he’s been the official photographer since 1984.
86. A new ticket-vending machine was installed in Grand Central Terminal in 1955, called Automaticket, it machine printed tickets and even returned change to customers, a high-tech innovation at the time. However, the machine could only print tickets between Grand Central and another station, and no round trips. Change was limited to a maximum of 49 cents.
87. The original plans for Grand Central Terminal included a skyscraper.
88. Argent Ventures, a privately held real estate company, owns the land under Grand Central Terminal. So the man known as the owner of Grand Central is a Manhattan real estate developer called Andrew Penson.
89. One of the most recent films to feature Grand Central is Men in Black III, which also has one of the most original interpretations of the terminal. A race of tiny aliens is kept inside a Grand Central locker, while at the end of the film, a locker in an enormous alien version of the terminal is shown to contain the human world.
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90. Commercial billboards and blackout paint – dating back to the Second World War – blocked out natural light in the station until its renovation in the 1990s.
91. The construction of Grand Central sparked a building boom in the area, with hotels and offices sprouting up nearby, including the Chrysler Building, and leading to Grand Central's nickname: “Terminal City”.
92. The terminal once had its own organist, Mary Lee Read, who started playing in 1928. On the day after Pearl Harbour was attacked she played the National Anthem and everyone within the station ground to a halt, so the story goes, causing commuters to miss their trains. She was forbidden from playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” after that.
93. Another quirky fact concerns the same organist. She is credited with saving the life of a man who was planning to commit suicide until he heard her play a moving hymn.
94. Among the various food outlets is one named after Michael Jordan, perhaps the most famous basketball player ever. The Michael Jordan Steakhouse opened after the major 1990s renovation of the terminal, with a design reminiscent of a train dining car. It has now spawned sister restaurants in Connecticut and Chicago.
95. In 2008, it took six people to switch all the naked incandescent bulbs to the fluorescent bulbs that are currently in use at the terminal.
96. The decline of the station during the 1950s and 1960s is widely blamed on competition from large trunk government-subsidised trunk roads and intercity airline traffic.
97. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was one of the most prominent supporters of Grand Central Terminal in the 1960s and 1970s as it battled developers, and she helped to secure its long-term future.
98. In 1991 the long-distance Amtrak trains stopped serving Grand Central, instead running from nearby Pennsylvania Station.
99. When they were taken down for cleaning in the 1990s, the station’s chandeliers were thought to be bronze. But once the encrusted dirt was cleaned up, their original gold was revealed.
100. High up on the ceiling mural (above the constellation Cancer) is a small hole, a legacy of a NASA promotion in 1957. With the government trying to drum up support for America's space program as the Space Race really gathered speed, NASA brought in a rocket to draw attention to their work. A six-inch hole was punched in the ceiling to help support it.
1. First things first: it is officially Grand Central Terminal, and NOT Grand Central Station. However, many people do still refer to it as the latter, including the Canadian author Elizabeth Smart, who wrote the prose poetry novel “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” .
2. There are, however, two existing grand central stations, so perhaps she was right after all. The U.S. Post Office station next door is also known as Grand Central Station. The name is also sometimes used to refer to the Grand Central – 42nd Street subway station, which serves the terminal.
3. Outside the station, the clock in front of the Grand Central facade facing 42nd Street contains the world's largest example of Tiffany glass.
4. All levels, floors, and platforms within Grand Central can be reached by lifts or ramps. It was billed as the first great “stairless” station, a design considered necessary for train passengers with large trunks and train cases.
5. A once secret basement, widely referred to as M42, lies under the Terminal, containing converters used to supply electric currents to run the trains from the Terminal.
6. During the Second World War, German military intelligence reportedly learned of the M42, and sent two spies to sabotage it. The spies were arrested by the FBI before they could strike.
7. For more than 20 years, the attic of the east wing contained an art school and gallery space called the Grand Central School of Art, which was founded in 1922.
8. Among the directors of the school of Art was John Singer Sargent, one of the best known portrait painters of his generation.
9. Going Hollywood was the first of many films shot at the terminal. The 1933 movie starred Marion Davies and Bing Crosby.
10. One of the terminal’s most striking features is the astronomical mural on the ceiling of the main concourse ceiling, which shows the Mediterranean sky during the October to March zodiac and features 2,500 stars.
11. Despite its magnificence, the mural is by no means perfect. The stars are slightly displaced, and the sky is actually in reverse. It was reportedly a commuting amateur astronomer who noticed the error in the same year the terminal opened. Officials tried to explain that it represented God’s view. However, it seems more likely that workers had mistakenly looked at the diagram on the floor and done their work from there.
12. As many as 50 painters worked on the mural, trying to ensure that there was no variation in colour tone. They also experimented to find just the proper shade of blue.
14. The station is one of the world’s most noted Beaux-Arts landmarks. One of the design team Whitney Warren (a cousin of the Vanderbilts – the family whose fortune stemmed from railways, and were highly influential in the creation of Grand Central – spent ten years at the École des Beaux Arts). Many naturally credit the terminal’s look to him.
15. The information booth is a perennial meeting place of the station, most noted for its magnificent clock. Each of the four clock faces is made from opal, and auction houses including Sotheby's and Christie's estimate its worth at more than $10 million (£6.3m)
16. The information booth is also known for having a "secret" door – although rather less secret now it has a reference on Wikipedia – leading to a staircase down to a lower level information booth.
17. When it is open, staff at the information booth deal with more than 1,000 questions an hour.
18. On top of the information booth clock, there is an acorn. It’s the Vanderbilt family symbol: “From the acorn grows the mighty oak.” Acorns and oak leaf clusters have engravings in the marble and on lighting fixtures.
20. September 11 has not been a lucky date for the Terminal. Obviously on that day in 2001, the terminal had one of its most fraught days ever. However, it was also the date in 1976 that group of Croatian nationalists planted a bomb in a locker at Grand Central Terminal. A bomb squad specialist was killed and 30 more wounded.
21. Grand Central was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, giving it official protection from developers who wished to demolish it.
22. Robin Williams’s character in the film “The Fisher King” encounters the woman of his dreams in Grand Central Terminal.
23. There is a train platform that has a concealed entrance, along with a lift that goes straight up to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. This is the "secret" platform, number 61, and was once used to convey President Franklin D. Roosevelt directly into the hotel.
24. In North by Northwest, Cary Grant makes his escape from New York City in a sequence filmed at night inside the real station.
26. When Grand Central was renovated in the 1990s, the ceiling was hidden under a layer of black grime, thought to be from coal and diesel smoke. Closer inspection revealed it to be tar and nicotine from tobacco. A single dark patch is still there (above the Michael Jordan Steakhouse) as a reminder of the grime that once was.
27. The oldest business in Grand Central is the Oyster Bar, which first opened its doors the same year as the terminal itself in 1913.
28. The Oyster Bar carries up to 30 varieties of oysters each day.
29. Some language historians believe the phrase “red carpet treatment” evolved at the Grand Central Terminal. Its use is thought to have entered popular vernacular through the luxurious 20th Century Limited express passenger train from New York to Chicago. Passengers used to walk down a crimson carpet, a ritual only done for those departing from New York.
30. The Biltmore Room was where the 20th Century Limited train used to arrive. Passengers – often numbering celebrities and significant public figures – would descend from the train and greet their loved ones here. For that reason, it became known as the “Kissing Room”.
31. There is "whispering gallery" in Grand Central on the dining concourse near the Oyster Bar . Low ceramic arches create acoustics that can make a quiet noise sound much louder.
32. The original station on the site was known as the Grand Central Depot, the brainchild of Cornelius Vanderbilt (see also fact 14), the American industrialist and philanthropist who built his wealth in shipping and railroads. It was finished in 1871.
33. In its second incarnation as "Grand Central Station," the most prominent feature was an enormous train shed, made of glass and steel, which some said rivalled the Eiffel Tower and Crystal Palace.
34. A catastrophic steam train collision on January 8, 1902 in the Park Avenue tunnel killed 15 people and injured 37. The ensuing public outcry increased demand for electric trains and precipitated plans for the new terminal.
35. In the ten years of Grand Central Terminal’s excavation and construction, rail service continued uninterrupted.
36. Grand Central Terminal officially opened to great fanfare at 12:01 am on Sunday, February 2, 1913, and more than 150,000 people visited the new terminal on its opening day.
37. In 1947, an estimated 65 million people – or around 40 per cent of the entire population of the United States – travelled by train via Grand Central Terminal.
38. In 1967, the Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York City, which was created in response to the destruction of Pennsylvania Station – designated Grand Central Terminal as a landmark, subject to the protection of law.
39. The staircases in Grand Central were based on the designs of the Paris Opera House.
40. In the original architectural plans there were two grand staircases, but there was only one standing when the Grand Central opened, for reasons that remain unclear. Perhaps funds ran dry, perhaps builders decided there was nothing worth visiting on the eastern wing. The western one is the original; the eastern was added during the renovation in the 1990s.
41. Interestingly, the new eastern staircase is actually a few inches shorter than its western counterpart, and with a few less flourishes.
42. Every day, more than 750,000 people pass through Grand Central, which is more than the entire population of Leeds, or roughly the population of San Francisco.
43. The terminal covers 48 acres from 42nd Street to 97th Street, encompassing 33 miles of track.
44. Each day, an estimated 10,000 people come into Grand Central to have lunch, and don’t a catch a train at all.
45. One of the original flash mob stunts happened within Grand Central. This clip shows more than 200 people stop completely still in the middle of the terminal out of the blue. Minutes later, they walk away.
46. The Lost and Found (lost property) at Grand Central receives more than 2,000 items every month. According to official statistics 80 per cent of the items are returned to the owners, apparently making it the best recovery rate of any Lost and Found in the world.
47. Items that have been handed in include an urn of cremated ashes and a barking basset hound. Both made it back to their respective owners.
48. All light bulbs in the original terminal were naked and prominently on display. This was a way of drawing attention to the fact the terminal was all electric, quite a noteworthy achievement in 1913.
49. It has been ranked as the sixth most visited tourist attraction in the world by Travel+Leisure magazine, with more than 21.5 million annual visitors.
50. Every clock in Grand Central is set by an atomic clock at a naval observatory in Maryland, which reportedly makes them accurate to with one second every 1.4 million years.
51. The basement in Grand Central is the deepest basement in New York City. Apparently a ten-story office could slip through the Main Concourse floor, and still not touch the basement floor of Grand Central.
52. Television and radio studios used to be on the third floor of Grand Central, making it a very common occurrence to see the likes of Groucho Marx and Bob Hope.
53. Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most prominent fans of the terminal. Apparently he always worked to make Grand Central look grand, shooting it in Technicolor where possible.
54. RKO Radio Pictures shot more films in Grand Central than any other studio. Stars in its films included Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple and John Wayne, and Jennifer Jones.
55. Grand Central was filmed in Technicolor for the first time in 1953. This was for the MGM movie “The Band Wagon” in which Fred Astaire got off the 20th Century Limited train and danced up Track 34.
56. In fact, almost every film featuring a train arriving at or departing from the terminal is shot from Track 34. This is due to it being one of the few platforms to have no columns.
56. At the busiest periods of construction, 10,000 people were working to the site, and work continued around the clock.
57. Despite its renown as a Beaux-Arts landmark, some credit Grand Central as one of the forerunners of modern architecture, especially for its glass catwalks. They provide ventilation, illumination, and transportation from one office tower to the next, giving weight to the idea of form following function, a trademark of modern architecture.
58. The statues around the clock on Grand Central’s south face represent Mercury, Hercules and Minerva, all considered apt gods to represent the railroads with their attributes of speed, strength and intellect.
59. At the time, this was considered the largest group of sculptures in the world, at 48 feet (14.6m) high.
60. The French artist Jules-Alexis Coutan was responsible for the design of the sculpture (known as “Transportation”). However, M. Coutan never visited the US, and the sculptures were carved by the John Donnelly company.
61. The largest newspaper recycling program under one roof in the USA is in operation at Grand Central. Apparently more than four tonnes of newsprint are recycled daily.
62. New cars used to be exhibited in Grand Central on turntables: the two models that were most often shown no longer exist: Oldsmobile and Rambler.
63. Broadcast studios, political rallies, art exhibits, and tightrope walks, have all taken place in Grand Central, a small taste of the many ways the public space has been used.
64. Someone called F. M. Lahm from the city of Yonkers in New York State is recorded as having bought the first ticket.
65. A large American flag is permanently draped in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, placed there a few days after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
67. Almost inevitably there has been a LEGO replica of the terminal, made of 5,000 bricks. It is being displayed in the terminal for the centenery celebrations.
68. In 1954, serious plans were mooted to replace Grand Central with an 80-storey tower, taller than the Empire State Building, plans that rumbled on in one form or another for decades.
69. The terminal’s display board became something of a New York institution, with its many displays would flapping furiously to show the ever changing arrivals and departures. It was an electromechanical display that displayed times and track numbers of arriving and departing trains.
70. William J. Wilgus is credited as the person responsible for the design and construction of the new Grand Central Terminal. The idea came to him “in a flash of light,” he recalled decades later, according to the New York Times.
71. On the original 17 acres bought by the railroad, 120 houses, three churches, two hospitals and an orphan asylum had to be obliterated, as would the stables, warehouses and other ancillary structures.
72. The New York Times said of the plans for the new terminal that: “in describing it, the superlative degree must be kept in constant use.”
73. The destruction of buildings to construct the Grand Central Terminal was the city’s largest individual demolition contract ever.
74. Apart from the trains, the most used form of transportation within Grand Central are the lifts, which make thousands of trips a day.
75. Nearly 3.2 million cubic yards of earth were excavated for the construction for the terminal, as well as rock to an average depth of 45 feet.
76. All the rubbish and debris was enough to fill almost 300 railway dump cars every day.
77. The terminal alone cost $43 million (£27m) to build, the equivalent of about $1 billion (£633m) today
78. The first train to leave the terminal was the Boston Express No. 2, which departed at 12.01am on February 2, 1913.
79. The first train to pull in at the terminal was a local train on the Harlem line.
80. Of the many shops at Grand Central, most are either private, small-scale businesses or small franchises. There are three exceptions: a Starbucks, a Rite Aid pharmacy and an Apple Store, the latter of which opened in December 2011.
82. The finishing touches to Grand Central Terminal were not complete for several years after its official opening (the traffic viaduct did not open until 1919).
83. The Grand Central station that preceded the current terminal helped bring times into synch across the United States. In the mid-1800s, cities kept their own times. But with more people taking the train, railroad officials pushed for a national standard – to avoid collisions, among other things. On November 18, 1883, known as “the day with two noons,” at three minutes and 58 seconds past 12, the clock was wound back to noon again. Grand Central had started keeping standard time a few hours before.
84. A barbershop for men that existed at the terminal in 1913 boasted that the customer could be shaved “in any one of 30 languages.”
85. A man called Frank English has a very good claim to have taken more photos in Grand Central than anyone else. By his own estimation, he has taken at least 200,000 photos – unsurprising as he’s been the official photographer since 1984.
86. A new ticket-vending machine was installed in Grand Central Terminal in 1955, called Automaticket, it machine printed tickets and even returned change to customers, a high-tech innovation at the time. However, the machine could only print tickets between Grand Central and another station, and no round trips. Change was limited to a maximum of 49 cents.
87. The original plans for Grand Central Terminal included a skyscraper.
88. Argent Ventures, a privately held real estate company, owns the land under Grand Central Terminal. So the man known as the owner of Grand Central is a Manhattan real estate developer called Andrew Penson.
89. One of the most recent films to feature Grand Central is Men in Black III, which also has one of the most original interpretations of the terminal. A race of tiny aliens is kept inside a Grand Central locker, while at the end of the film, a locker in an enormous alien version of the terminal is shown to contain the human world.
91. The construction of Grand Central sparked a building boom in the area, with hotels and offices sprouting up nearby, including the Chrysler Building, and leading to Grand Central's nickname: “Terminal City”.
92. The terminal once had its own organist, Mary Lee Read, who started playing in 1928. On the day after Pearl Harbour was attacked she played the National Anthem and everyone within the station ground to a halt, so the story goes, causing commuters to miss their trains. She was forbidden from playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” after that.
93. Another quirky fact concerns the same organist. She is credited with saving the life of a man who was planning to commit suicide until he heard her play a moving hymn.
94. Among the various food outlets is one named after Michael Jordan, perhaps the most famous basketball player ever. The Michael Jordan Steakhouse opened after the major 1990s renovation of the terminal, with a design reminiscent of a train dining car. It has now spawned sister restaurants in Connecticut and Chicago.
95. In 2008, it took six people to switch all the naked incandescent bulbs to the fluorescent bulbs that are currently in use at the terminal.
96. The decline of the station during the 1950s and 1960s is widely blamed on competition from large trunk government-subsidised trunk roads and intercity airline traffic.
97. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was one of the most prominent supporters of Grand Central Terminal in the 1960s and 1970s as it battled developers, and she helped to secure its long-term future.
98. In 1991 the long-distance Amtrak trains stopped serving Grand Central, instead running from nearby Pennsylvania Station.
99. When they were taken down for cleaning in the 1990s, the station’s chandeliers were thought to be bronze. But once the encrusted dirt was cleaned up, their original gold was revealed.
100. High up on the ceiling mural (above the constellation Cancer) is a small hole, a legacy of a NASA promotion in 1957. With the government trying to drum up support for America's space program as the Space Race really gathered speed, NASA brought in a rocket to draw attention to their work. A six-inch hole was punched in the ceiling to help support it.