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Grand Central’s Engineer William J Wilgus and the planning of modern Manhattan b
Grand Centrals Engineer William J Wilgus and the planning of modern Manhattan by Kurt Schlichting
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
277 pages
Copyright 2012
CONTENTSPREFACE XI
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER ONE.
New York City's Geography and Transportation Challenges 11
CHAPTER TWO.
The Brilliance of Grand Central42
CHAPTER THREE.
New York's Freight Problem 74
CHAPTER FOUR.
Expanding the Subway in Manhattan106
CHAPTER FIVE.
World War and Ideas for a New York-New Jersey "Port Authority" 141
CHAPTER SIX.
Making Room for the Automobile: The Holland Tunnel 186
CHAPTER SEVEN.
Joining Staten Island to New York City: The Narrows Tunnel 219
CONCLUSION 245
NOTES 257
INTRODUCTIONNew York Tim s dev ted an entre special section of the newspaper to the opening of the new Grand Central Terminal on 42nd Street. A lead on the second page hailed the New York Central Railroad for "Solving Greatest Terminal Problem of the Age:" The paper celebrated the opening of the New York Central's magnificent new terminal building in the heart of the greatest city in the world. No superlative seemed adequate to extol the grandeur of the new gateway to New York. The Times lavished praise on the building's architecture and the soaring space at its core, the Grand Concourse.
The Times editorial page, usually given to somber opinions, dramatically referred to Grand Central as "A Glory of the Metropolis" and added:
Railroad stations possess for a city something of the importance that is possessed for a country by railroads themselves. It is by no means an idle or empty boast, therefore, for New York to proclaim that from to-day it will have in use for itself and its daily army of visitors what are beyond question two railroad stations in every way superior to any other buildings for their purpose in the world.... The corporations have expended their millions in no mean and narrow spirit of utilitarianism, but with appreciation of a civic duty to produce architectural monuments to illustrate and educate the aesthetic taste of a great nation.'
The second station referred to was the new Pennsylvania Station at 34th Street, opened with similar fanfare by the Pennsylvania Railroad a year earlier. New York City now boasted the two largest and most elaborate rail passenger facilities in the world. What more majestic symbols than Grand Central and Pennsylvania Station could a city that increasingly viewed itself as the most important place on the face of the earth have?
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