Grand Central Terminal is a major commuter rail terminal in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, serving the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, and the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). It is the most recent of three functionally similar buildings on the same site. The current structure was built by and named for the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, though it also served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Passenger service has continued under the successors of the New York Central and New Haven railroads.
Grand Central Terminal arose from a need to build a central station for three railroads in present-day Midtown Manhattan. In 1871, the magnate Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt created Grand Central Depot for the New York Central & Hudson River, New York and Harlem Railroad, and New Haven railroads. Due to rapid growth, the depot was reconstructed and renamed Grand Central Station by 1900. The current structure, designed by the firms Reed and Stem and Warren and Wetmore, was built after a 1902 crash between two steam trains had prompted a study of the feasibility of electric trains. The building's construction started in 1903 and it was opened on February 2, 1913.
The terminal continued to grow until after World War II, when train traffic started to decline. In the 1950s and 1970s, there were two separate proposals to demolish Grand Central, though both were unsuccessful. The terminal was given several official landmark designations during this period. Minor improvements occurred through the 1970s and 1980s, followed by an extensive rehabilitation in the mid- and late 1990s.
From 1913 to 1991, Grand Central was also a major intercity terminal. In its latter years as an intercity station, all trains traveling along Amtrak's Empire Corridor—the former main line of the New York Central—originated and terminated at Grand Central. In 1991, Amtrak consolidated its New York City services at nearby Penn Station. The East Side Access project, which brought LIRR service to a new station beneath the terminal, was completed in January 2023.
Background Grand Central Terminal arose from a need to build a central station for the Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad in what is now Midtown Manhattan. The Harlem Railroad was the first of these railroads to operate, having been incorporated in 1831. The railroad had been extended to Harlem, in upper Manhattan, by 1837. The first railroad structure of any kind on the modern-day site of Grand Central Terminal was a maintenance shed for the Harlem Railroad, built 1837 on the west side of Fourth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets.
Since the Harlem Railroad had the exclusive right to operate along the east side of Manhattan south of the Harlem River, it originally ran as a steam railroad on street level along Fourth (now Park) Avenue. After the passage of laws prohibiting steam trains in Lower Manhattan, the railroad's southern terminal was moved northward from 14th Street in Union Square to 26th Street near Madison Square. In 1857, the New Haven Railroad built a terminal adjacent to the Harlem Railroad's; their rail lines turned into a rail yard shared by both terminals, which was the beginning of the idea of a central terminal, shared by different rail companies. The building was later converted into the first Madison Square Garden.
The New Haven Railroad was chartered in 1849 and had trackage rights to operate on the Harlem Railroad's tracks from Wakefield, Bronx, to Manhattan. The Hudson River Railroad did not have any trackage rights with the Harlem Railroad, so it ran in Manhattan separately along what would become the West Side Line, terminating at Tenth Avenue and 30th Street in what is now Hudson Yards. When the city banned steam trains below 42nd Street , the Harlem and New Haven Railroads' southern terminal was moved there. The Hudson River Railroad, meanwhile, was limited to the west side of Manhattan, away from the development that was concentrated on the east side.
The business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who operated steamboats along the Hudson River, started buying the Harlem Railroad's stock in 1863. By the next year, he also controlled the Hudson River Railroad.John Fink, "Railroads", in . Vanderbilt attempted to get permission to merge the railroads in 1864, but Daniel Drew, a one-time competitor in the steamboat industry, bribed state legislators to scuttle the proposal. Drew unsuccessfully attempted to short-sell Harlem and New York Central stock, and Vanderbilt made large profits after buying stock in both companies. Vanderbilt became the president of the Hudson River and New York Central railroads in 1867, and merged them into the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad two years later, on November 1, 1869. He then built a connecting line along the Harlem River's northern and eastern bank, running from the Hudson River Railroad in Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx, to the junction with the Harlem Railroad in Mott Haven, Bronx, as part of the Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad.
Concurrently, the Harlem Railroad expanded in the area around the 42nd Street depot, which at the time was still sparsely developed. By the mid-1860s, the railroad owned 11 parcels bounded by 42nd and 48th streets on either side of Fourth Avenue, between Lexington Avenue and Madison Avenue. The structures on these parcels included two locomotive sheds, a car house, and a stable and horseshoeing shop for the horses that pulled Harlem Railroad carriages from 42nd Street to Madison Square.
Vanderbilt developed a proposal to unite the three railroads at a single central station, replacing the separate and adjacent stations that created chaos in baggage transfer. The three lines would meet at Mott Haven, then run on the Harlem Railroad's tracks along Park Avenue in Manhattan to a new hub station at 42nd Street.
Grand Central Depot
By 1869, Vanderbilt had commissioned John B. Snook to design his new station, dubbed Grand Central Depot, on the site of the 42nd Street depot. The site was far outside the limits of the developed city at the time, and even Vanderbilt's backers warned against building the terminal in such an undeveloped area. Snook worked with engineers Isaac Buckhout and R.G. Buckfield to design the structure. Its train shed was designed by either Joseph Duclos or R. G. Hatfield, both of whom were employed by the fabricators, the Architectural Iron Works. Although Vanderbilt was inspired by French Classical architecture, Snook's final design was in the Second Empire style. Its design, materials, and convenience rivaled European train stations; it was considered the first in the U.S. to measure up to those in Europe.
Construction started on September 1, 1869, and the depot was completed by October 1871. The project included the creation of Vanderbilt Avenue, a service road along the depot's western border. To reduce confusion, the railroads staggered their inaugural runs to the new station. The Harlem Railroad switched from its Madison Square depot on October 9, 1871; the New Haven Railroad arrived on October 16; and the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad on November 1, eight days later than planned.
Structure
The terminal consisted of a three-story head house as well as a train shed to the north and east of the head house. The head house was an L-shaped structure with a short leg running east–west on 42nd Street and a long leg running north–south on Vanderbilt Avenue. It contained passenger service areas at ground level and railroad offices on the upper levels. The train shed was a generally cylindrical-shaped glass structure about long by wide, with a height of at the crown. The train shed's roof was composed of thirty-two trusses that arched above the platforms. There were three waiting rooms, one for each of the three railroads, and a metal-and-glass screen with metal doors closed off the north end of the station. The structure measured along Vanderbilt Avenue and along 42nd Street. It was considered the largest railroad station in the world, with 12 tracks that could accommodate 150 train cars at once. It also had the largest interior space in North America. The storage yard stretched north to 58th Street, and the New York Central employed several switchers to shunt empty passenger cars to and from the storage sidings.
Grand Central Depot contained three innovative features of note: high-level platforms, level with train cars' floors; a balloon roof for the train shed, enabling a clear span over the tracks; and inspectors who allowed only ticketed passengers on the platforms. There were four restaurants, a billiards room, stores, and a police station. Its design was similar to that of other major railroad stations, such as St Pancras station in London and Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon in Paris. In particular, Snook took inspiration for the train shed's roof from St Pancras and London's Crystal Palace, as well as from the Louvre museum in Paris.
Later modifications The tracks laid to the new terminal proved problematic. Accidents began immediately at the grade crossings along Fourth Avenue from 42nd and 59th streets; seven people died within 12 days of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad's move to Grand Central. The following year, in 1872, Vanderbilt proposed the Fourth Avenue Improvement Project. The tracks between 48th and 56th streets were to be moved into a shallow open cut, while the segment between 56th and 97th streets, which was in a rock cut, would be covered over. The improvements were completed in 1874, allowing trains approaching Grand Central Depot from the north to descend into the Park Avenue Tunnel at 96th Street and continue underground into the new depot. As part of the project, Fourth Avenue was transformed into a boulevard with a median strip that covered the railroad's ventilation grates, and renamed Park Avenue. Eight footbridges crossed the tracks between 45th and 56th streets; vehicles crossed on overpasses at 45th and 48th streets.
Traffic at Grand Central Depot grew quickly, filling its 12 tracks to capacity by the mid-1880s, not the late 1890s or early 1900s as expected. In 1885, a seven-track annex with five platforms was added to the east side of the existing terminal. Designed in the same style as the original station, with a mansard roof, it handled passengers disembarking to New York City, while the original building handled outbound traffic. If the annex had been a standalone station, it would have been the country's fourth-largest at the time, The New York Sun wrote just before it opened. The project included the construction of Depew Place, a marginal road on the east side of the annex named for longtime Vanderbilt lawyer Chauncey Depew and meant to complement Vanderbilt Avenue on the station's west side. The train yards were also expanded, and various maintenance sheds were moved to Mott Haven.
Grand Central Station
Grand Central Depot reached its capacity again by 1897, when it saw 11.5 million passengers a year. To accommodate the crowds, the railroads expanded the head house from three to six stories, enlarged the concourse at a cost of $2.5 million to connect the three railroads' separate waiting rooms, and increased the combined areas of the waiting rooms from . Foyers were added to the west, south, and east sides of the station; women's waiting rooms, smoking rooms, and restrooms were also added. The tracks that previously continued south of 42nd Street were removed. The train yard was reconfigured and a pneumatic switch system was added in an effort to reduce congestion and turn-around time for trains. Finally, the renovation added a new facade in the Neo-Renaissance style, based on plans by railroad architect Bradford Gilbert.