![]() According to the MTA, some of the 110 firms leasing space in the terminal pay $296 a square foot. Grand Central occupies 48 acres in midtown Manhattan, some of the choicest real estate in the world, the sort of property that makes developers salivate. And there is the endless screech of the subway. The farthest is to Dover Plains, N.Y., 76 miles away on the Harlem line. Conrail operates three commuter lines for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, with 527 runs in and out of the terminal. You can still catch a train to Montreal or Toronto or Poughkeepsie, but Amtrak schedules only 24 long-distance trains a day now. The big year was 1946, when Grand Central accommodated 63 million people. There was a time when the terminal never closed, when travelers marched its Tennessee marble floors to catch the Twentieth Century Limited, the Yankee Clipper, the Wolverine, trains that would take them to New England or Chicago, and from there, as far as the Pacific. It is not a station, it is a terminal, those attached to it heatedly point out. Grand Central has been called the greatest of the world's rail terminals, although at 69, its age is showing. Half a million people scurry through Grand Central every day, pouring like a human waterfall down steep escalators from the Pan Am Building into the main concourse, snacking at restaurants, cutting through to Park Avenue or any of the thoroughfares that jut from the terminal. The depot has its own police force, its own emergency clinic, its own clockkeeper nicknamed "Tick Tock." It has more than five miles of passageways, 85 retail shops. You can also, if you're not careful, lose a necklace, a purse, a wallet, a suitcase. ![]() You can catch the subway or any of the 551 trains departing daily. You can get your shoes shined, play a quick game of hand ball, cash a check, copy a re'sume', bet on a horse, buy a book, flowers, coffee beans, a blow-up of Mount St. Grand Central Terminal is a city within the city of New York, where you can get dark-needled sea urchins to go all the chocolate chip cookies your digestive system can stand fat, red, heat-seared bockwurst, giant pretzels, bagels, oysters, Alka-Seltzer. It is one of a kind, a massive, thriving oddity in a land where travel has come to mean flight.
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