This is old hat for Japan , Greeks, Egyptians , Persians, Chinese, they have seen this crap many times before. They have a competent society. They will hold, but for us it’s new … people can’t handle lockdowns, too many liberties, not coming together in dire times . It dosen’t matter one bit what the government does , whatever it is , the opposition, are instantly against it. That will tear society apart at this time, which is exactly what your enemies want.
Be brave, be strong , I mean what’s so hard about watching TV and staying home. Once in a lifetime opportunity.
But Grand Central Terminal sounds nowadays as if the place is dying of some syndrome or other. Suggest he just emend it to ‘Grand Central’ as everyone knows what is meant, just like ‘the bridge’ is the George Washington Bridge, and “Jersey” is a brown stripe…
This ranks up there, with Steinberg’s cover, as one of the New Yorker’s most iconic.
(Some wisenheimer/besserwisser is sure to ask where those sun rays are coming from. I wouldn’t blame him/her – those are actually ‘rays of hope’ coming from ‘the East’, or something. A few big daylight LED arrays and diffusers, and we could have “perpetual springtime all year long”…)
Sad to say, at least one taxi driver in Chicago did not know where Grand Central Station was. The first time I was in Chicago, I came in on the GM&O and left on the B&O. Not knowing any better, I told the driver that I wanted to go to the Grand Central Station; she drove right by it and took me to another station, but did get me to the right station in time. The ticket man in the station had trouble understanding my request for a ticket to Baltimore and a slumber room to Washington (I wanted to visit the B&O museum)
I was on my way from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Black Mountain, North Carolina, adding new miles along the way.
Ok amended to simply Grand Central. I’m up here on the Canadian Shield buried in snow, constantly snowing, for a week now, what do I really know,…thinking I called it simply Grand Central and at times adding the word station. Not sure and doubt I ever referred to ‘Terminal’. That would have made for a terrible header anyway, as Overmod pointed out. Mostly I called it “New York Central railroad Grand Central”.
Was there twice, once as a toddler and once as a young man. Both times arriving by train.
Recall that I was a GCT-WhiteNorth reverse commuter 1971 - 1996
First train trip remembered, arrival at GCT from Hartford, age 3.5, late summer 1935.
First train trip without parents, first Pullman ride, to summer camp, age 6.5 early summer 1938, GCT - Concord, NH
Last USA RR (not subway) trip. June 1996, WhiteNorth - GCT
My only office in New York City after Klepper Marshall King moved from my Aunt’s office to White Plains near White Plains North Station, the Electric Railroaders Association Headquaters in Grand Central Terminal. I’ll always be a member, and will continue to list it as one of the places where I may have leavened bread just before Passover.
But my last long-distance train trip before moving to Israel was West Palm Beach - Penn. Sta. after a relative’s wedding, winter '95-96.
Sunlight never streams thru those windows like that nowadays, does it? Something blocks it now?
The other difference between the old days and nowadays: to see the sun’s rays streaming thru the air, there has to be something in the air – like cigarette smoke.
If you remember, as I do, Grand Central (and Rockefeller Center) as black buildings, you will know what the something in the air likely was, and where it came from…
All through the '60s, it was a rare day that you could see further south than about 72nd St. from the George Washington Bridge. Exactly twice in all my childhood could you see far enough down to the Statue of Liberty. I do acknowledge that this was the price for the prosperity of the anthracite roads … but I’m not sad it’s gone, either.
Around noon, Standard Time, the sun does stream through the window, not blocked by the buildings each side of Park Avenue South, south of the Terminal.
I had this argument made to me in '77 when developing the ‘emergency’ skyscraper proposals in case the landmark law wasn’t upheld by the Court.
This was an extension of the argument that a skyscraper over the concourse would ‘block the view down Park Avenue’. This was essentially blocked in the Twenties with the New York Central/creatively-adapted New York General/Helmsley building – but much more definitively by the big gray octagon. Breuer’s ‘second proposal’ would have blocked the south concourse windows (as well as taking out the bowling alley!) and my alternative of course would not only preserve those windows (on both sides) but keep them all open as well.
Around noon Standard time the sun is almost vertical overhead, so the ‘raking’ angle would be relative to the time of the year. You can calculate both the angle and the effective time this can happen; the problem I have is that in order to ‘clear’ the rays would be at a fairly dramatic angle east-to-west, so skewed relative to the ‘historical image’. It might be fun to get good data, 'gin up the angles of actual insolation at appropriate times of year, and model what you’d actually see.
Start with the ‘nominal’ GPS position of GCT (which is 40.7527N, 73.9772W) and adjust as necessary to get positions for the north windows. Then considerations of the ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’ (what fun to be able to use this phrase in a post!) will give you the times of year sunrays will actually be able to strike the windows, and the times of day the east-to-west track will align the sun correctly.
Euc can probably have some fun going through the pages in
Apparenlty I did not look at the picture carefully and assumed the sun’s rays were coming through the south windows. I’ve never seen them comling through the north windows.
But the pcture isn’t right either way. Don’t see the train gates that are on the north wall nor the ticket windows and departure signs on the south wall. The stairs and balcony could be either east or west. Must be drawn from a concorse configuration of more than 85 yeara ago.
In any case, sun does at times ccome in through the south windows, and at certain times of the year at the angle drawn.
Note his proposed use of fog machinery… hey! We could repurpose this to include nebulized sanitizing agents … a-and some UV diodes in the matrix … and perhaps get quick financing to build it out!
The ‘best’ original images can be located without extensive Mike-grade web searching here:
Comparing these with the New Yorker cover gives a pretty quick idea of what is, and isn’t, being referenced. (I gently suggest that the cover artist is not particularly familiar with the actual structures inside the GCT concourse and what they were meant to do…)
Mod-man, just like yourself both Lady Firestorm and I remember going into the city, say late 60’s, early 70’s, and looking out the back window of the family car during and after crossing the GWB and seeing the smog haze over Manhattan. You couldn’t miss it.
People who howl about American air pollution now have no idea and no memory of what it used to be like. None at all.
Is this associated with the bowling alley and other stuff built in over the waiting room?
I was lucky enough to have been working with the folks at 466 Lex when they’d make copies of all the blueprints you wanted if you wrote to them on letterhead. Unfortunately all the stuff I had was concourse and structural systems, where my project was concerned – not the front end where Breuer’s was, so I don’t really know what’s in there that might block direct insolation at that angle. I suspect the information does exist on the Web, though… there was at least one architectural discussion of the changes that were supposed to be involved in the early stages of Breuer’s buildout that might have actually been started before the landmarks hearing business got momentum.
