45 Facts About Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

Grand Central is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York metropolitan area.

Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions, with 21.

Grand Central Terminal contains a variety of stores and food vendors, including upscale restaurants and bars, two food halls, and a grocery marketplace.

Grand Central Terminal was built by and named for the New York Central Railroad; it served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and, later, successors to the New York Central.

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Grand Central Terminal served intercity trains until 1991, when Amtrak began routing its trains through nearby Penn Station.

Grand Central covers 48 acres and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world.

Grand Central Terminal was named by and for the New York Central Railroad, which built the station and its two predecessors on the site.

Grand Central Terminal serves some 67 million passengers a year, more than any other Metro-North station.

Notable Amtrak services at Grand Central included the Lake Shore, Empire Service, Adirondack, Niagara Rainbow, Maple Leaf, and Empire State Express.

Grand Central Terminal was designed and built with two main levels for passengers: an upper for intercity trains and a lower for commuter trains.

The first two vaults, as viewed from leaving Grand Central, are painted with cumulus clouds, while the third contains a 1927 mural by Edward Trumbull depicting American transportation.

Grand Central North is a network of four tunnels that allow people to walk between the station building and exits at 45th, 46th, 47th, and 48th Street.

Grand Central Terminal management responded first by removing the room's benches, then by closing the space entirely.

Grand Central Terminal holds the Guinness World Record for having the most platforms of any railroad station: 28, which support 44 platform numbers.

Grand Central Terminal has a single Operations Control Center, where controllers monitor the track interlockings with computers.

Grand Central Terminal was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Reed and Stem, which was responsible for the overall design of the terminal, and Warren and Wetmore, which mainly made cosmetic alterations to the exterior and interior.

Grand Central has both monumental spaces and meticulously crafted detail, especially on its facade.

Grand Central Terminal is widely recognized and favorably viewed by the American public.

Grand Central Terminal has a post office at 450 Lexington Avenue, originally built from 1906 to 1909, though with a high-rise tower built atop it in 1992.

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 modern-day Midtown Manhattan.

Grand Central Depot had reached its capacity again by the late 1890s, and it carried 11.

The Grand Central Terminal project was divided into eight phases, though the construction of the terminal itself comprised only two of these phases.

In 1903, New York Central invited four architecture firms to a design competition to decide who would design the new terminal.

Grand Central Terminal spurred development in the surrounding area, particularly in Grand Central Terminal City, a commercial and office district created above where the tracks were covered.

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The development of Grand Central Terminal City included the construction of the Park Avenue Viaduct, surrounding the station, in the 1920s.

In 1968, New York Grand Central Terminal, facing bankruptcy, merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad to form the Penn Grand Central Terminal Railroad.

When Penn Grand Central Terminal reorganized as American Premier Underwriters in 1994, it retained ownership of Penn Grand Central Terminal.

Grand Central and the surrounding neighborhood became dilapidated during the 1970s, and the interior of Grand Central was dominated by huge advertisements, which included the Kodak Colorama photos and the Westclox "Big Ben" clock.

Grand Central Terminal was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and declared a National Historic Landmark in the following year.

In 1988, the MTA commissioned a study of the Grand Central Terminal, which concluded that parts of the terminal could be turned into a retail area.

Grand Central was designed with two concourses, one on each level.

The waiting room by the Main Concourse, now Vanderbilt Hall, had an advantage over many, including Penn Station's: Grand Central's waiting room was a tranquil place to wait, with all ticket booths, information desks, baggage areas, and meeting areas instead removed to the Main Concourse.

Every train at Grand Central Terminal departs one minute later than its posted departure time.

When Grand Central Terminal opened, it hired two types of porters, marked with different-colored caps, to assist passengers.

Grand Central Terminal was built to handle 200 trains per hour, though actual traffic never came close to that.

The structures immediately around Grand Central Terminal were developed shortly after the terminal's opening, while the structures along Park Avenue were constructed through the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1929, New York Central built its headquarters in a 34-story building, later renamed the Helmsley Building, which straddled Park Avenue north of the terminal.

Development slowed drastically during the Great Depression, and part of Grand Central Terminal City was gradually demolished or reconstructed with steel-and-glass designs after World War II.

Grand Central Terminal is served by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police Department, whose Fifth District is headquartered in a station on the Dining Concourse.

Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions, with 21.

Grand Central Terminal has been the subject, inspiration, or setting for literature, television and radio episodes, and films.

Grand Central Terminal's architecture, including its Main Concourse clock, are depicted on the stage of Saturday Night Live, an NBC television show.

Literature featuring the terminal includes Report on Grand Central Terminal, written in 1948 by nuclear physicist Leo Szilard; The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger; The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Grand Central Murder by Sue MacVeigh, which was made into the eponymous film in 1942; A Stranger Is Watching by Mary Higgins Clark; and the 1946 children's classic The Taxi That Hurried by Lucy Sprague Mitchell.

The infrastructure in Grand Central inspired the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and in turn, the film Hugo.

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