Hotel Commodore and Graybar Building sunblock GCT in the morning, except for the center window at 43rd St.
https://www.graybar150.com/then-now-the-graybar-building/
http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2554.pdf
Folks, I think there’s way too much thinkin’ and over-analyzin’ goin’ on.
Remember the old saying, “One picture is worth a thousand words?”
Look at that cover again. Never mind where the light’s coming from or whether the archtectural details are correct or not. Did you recognize it as GCT? Great! What’s the artist trying to say, especially in the current context?
Right! THAT’S what that cover’s all about!
Just open one of these time capsules, blow it up on the old 24 inch monitor and let your mind go. Nothing like going back into time to ponder who’s that tall guy next to the older woman, Is that his Aunt giving him an extra dollar to buy dinner in the dining car? Can you hear in the distance the echoing bustle of countless shoes on the marble floor, the call for the next departing train? Relax and enjoy the moment.
Thanks for sharing!
But those are the east and west windows, not the ‘iconic’ ones in the historical reference… and as you note these were usually blocked by adjacent buildings much of the time. Their ‘insolation’ angle would also change much more quickly with time of day, compared to the high north or south windows where the vertical angle is related to the angle of the ecliptic…
On the other hand, to paraphrase Wayne, sunrays through windows that size are always impressive, and some of those pictures are iconic in their own right.
With respect to the apparent picking of nits/rivets however – this is a railroad forum, and has people who are art-photography and architecture interested on it. If a New Yorker artist were to paint a GG1 arriving on one of the GCT tracks, with trimount trucks underneath, we’d say something too, even though the underlying ‘Golden Age’ reference would work without comment for the danes in the general population.
I personally am going to wait for Mr. Klepper or someone like him to retouch the actual historical picture to have the same impact… with all the relevant details updated reasonably well at the same time. Not that I would take anything away from the joy of recognition seeing the cover… and ‘getting it’.
Proving much of the point we were trying to make.
The problem in New York only peripherally involved LA-style photochemical smog – which itself largely depended upon NO to NO2 conversion via excessively rich unburned hydrocarbons in the air. Much of it was industrial, from plants that no longer exist and in fact whole industrial areas that no longer exist. Much of it was a consequence of burning high-sulfur coal in thousands of crapped-out furnaces. None of that would come back if you relaxed much of the ‘excessive’ EPA regulation – certainly if you, say, relaxed Tier 4 final the roughly 0.3 percent it would have taken to allow EMD 710s to meet the ragged edges of the test cycle without SCR. Instead we get rebuilds that put far more aggregate lb. of actual NO into the actual atmosphere… where thanks in no small part to ‘enlightened self-interest’ in fuel conservation there is far less HC content to react with.
Now, do I argue for more widespread abolition of air-quality regulations? Certainly not… but make them common-sense where absolute magnitude of effect is taken into consideration. When we get to where we have proper regulation of nanoparticle PM, which is by far the greatest health hazard from diesel exhaust, is untrained by current laughable PM traps or DPF equipment, and is not effectively recognized in current air-quality regulations (as larger PM/sooting is), then I’ll make more of a claim for stricter forms of EPA adherence as anything other than a kind of knee-jerk retention of strategies necessary in the Sixties, but less so now.
Just to expand a bit on my “over-analyzing” comment, a bit of personal experience.
As some of you may, or may not know, battle paintings and prints of the same are very popular with Civil War buffs. These are paintings produced by contemporary artists, not reprints of 19th Century originals, and it’s quite an industry in it’s own right.
Well, about 30 years ago when the industry was getting started I saw a print of General Lee and the troops at the Battle of Spotsylvania. Looking at the painting (print actually) I could see the artist didn’t miss a single detail. Weapons, accouterments, personal equipments, uniforms, flags, you name it, all spot-on and perfect. It was great history, no doubt about it.
But it wasn’t “art.” For all the attention to detail it was like a painting of wax dummies. There was no “life” in it. See what I’m getting at?
I won’t say who the artist was, but in the past three decades he’s improved tremendously, no more “wax dummies.”
Attention to detail is an important thing, but it’s not the only thing, especially if the painting doesn’t “live.”
And in my humble opinion, that GCT painting “lives.”
seppburgh2 – Great comment. An unimaginable amount of stories to pass through Grand Central. Had 2 Aunts, one would do exactly that guaranteed, the other would be asking me for the dollar, guaranteed. Moments in Space-Time.
Flintlock- Absolutely!
Again, I repeat, duirng much of the year, close-to-nnon, the sun does still enter the Grand Concourse of GCT though the south windows, which have a straight view down Park Avenue South without any buildings in the way all the way to around 12th Street, where the Avenue, there 4th Avenue, starts to curve to join 3rd Avenue at 9th Streeet, Cooper Square, to form the Bowery. The windows are above the roadways the nearly surround the building exactly at the second=floor floor level.
Thanks Miningman!
And I’ve got to go with David. He probably knows more about GCT than the people who built it!
There’s a great video floating around out there about GCT and the 20th Century Limited. Shot for the “Omnibus” TV program in the early 50’s the host is Alastair Cooke (Remember him?) with an appearance and commentary by David P. Morgan!
I’ve tried to find it on You Tube but no luck. Maybe Mike can help us on this one?
Great railroad photographers, James Winston Link, Charles Clegg (Beebe’s buddy), and newly discovered Father Frank Browne, JG, and you can name a host of others that we also praise, even Jim Wrinn himself, at least at times, produce accurate photos that live. A painting can be both and so can a photograph.
At this point I’m unsure of just how the New Yorker came to his internal cncourse “geography.” Cuerrently, because of surrounding tall buildings, only the south windows transmit sunlight. And the balconies and centered grand stairways are east and west, the west always present, the east removed for while (Kodak sign era) and restored. But painting is great, I’ll grant that, but just not accurate.
Just the act of painting conveys artistic license - as what is displayed is funneled through the eyes, mind and hands of the artist.
I should point out that in earlier times, sunlight did also come in through the west window, and earlier than that the east as well. North was shadowed by the New York Centrql building many yeara before the Pan Am.
Excerpt from “Grand Central Terminal” by A. C. Kalmbach
To millions of Americans who have never seen New York City, Grand Central Terminal is the embodiment of all the glitter and bustle that is Manhattan. To New Yorkers it is a utility; yet it is their very own railroad station, the one terminal on Manhattan which has grown up with the island. It is to New York the symbol of the far-flung New York Central System.
Seen from 42nd Street, the terminal is likely to be a disappointment to the bumpkin who gazes upon it for the first time. True, it looks just like the pictures. But it is dwarfed by skyscraper hotels and office buildings, and its magnificent show does not become really apparent until one gets inside. Then comes the first breathless view of the beautiful concourse and a gasp of amazement at the crowds coming and going, not via 42nd Street after all, but through numerous subterranean passages connecting with subways, hotels, and office buildings.
Most of these people give hardly a glance at the massive square columns, the perfectly proportioned vaulted ceiling, or the sunlight streaming down from the high south windows. They are on their way, in a railroad station, and all the architecture, all the impressiveness, are but an incident
Pennsylvania Station had stunning natural light features.
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Old Pennsylvania Station was breathtaking, no doubt about it.
Anyone who walked in there just knew he or she was in the throne room of the PRR’s mighty empire.
And now, I’m reminded of the words of Shelley:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings! Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing else remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
A fine design for and in natural light quality.
I sincerely regret not ever having seen the insides. I did so with Grand Central twice but not Pennsylvania Station.
Well its still out there somewhere in Space-Time so maybe I can go yet.
I also regret that I was unable to see Penn Station in its glory. I was in Grand Central a few times.
My God, my God, did you look at those photographs? (Dumb question, of course you did!)
Think about what went into building Penn Station, the engineering, the architecture, the stone and iron work, the interior planning and execution, the energy and the sweat, it just boggles the mind.
Now nothing but a pile of rubble in the Hackensack Meadows. What a waste. What a rotten, rotten waste!
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Then look at how quick they did it.
And what a small percentage of the overall through connection it represented…