Grand Central Terminal was officially opened as the new transportation depot on February 1st, 1913. Grand Central Terminal is actually not the first station to be in this space. The first station was Grand Central Depot, which was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt and opened and served as a hub for a number of railroad lines entering Manhattan in 1871. It soon came to light that this original building wasn’t big enough for the railroads that outgrew the depot and it was therefore demolished in 1899 and a much larger building was built. This much larger building was named Grand Central Station. But in 1903, the project of the current building started and it took 10 years to finish.
As a result of a fatal accident on January 8th, 1902, where 15 passengers were killed because a train crashed into another train, it was discovered that this accident was a result of the clouds coming from the steam engines and into the station so the driver of the train simply did not see the other train. Quickly, the Vanderbilt family announced that there were plans to build a whole new station that would use electricity to run the trains instead of steam. People of New York City already were complaining about the unhealthy soot and smog that was put into the streets from the trains crisscrossing the city, but it wasn’t until this accident that politicians did something about it. In the plans for the new station, it was decided that the station where the trains would be traveling in and out of the terminal would be underground. Now, valuable air rights were opened up on the streets above and numerous buildings were built around the station, creating midtown Manhattan. In the past, trains that came to Grand Central continued on into lower Manhattan and Grand Central was just a stop. But this was changed when the third Grand Central was built and Grand Central is now the final stop. Since all railroad lined now terminate at the 42nd Street station, meaning that it is a terminal, not a train station. This resulted in Grand Central now being called Grand Central Terminal.
Many, many years ago Grand Central Terminal had a movie theater, a museum where you could learn the history of the building and the railroads and even an art school, none of which remain today. However, Grand Central Terminal did have cafés back during this time, which it still has today. Most people weren’t aware that when television was a new thing, many of the programs that were shown were filmed in studios located above the restaurant, The Oyster Bar. In addition, during the late 1950’s after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, Americans were therefore concerned that the communist nation was leading over the United States in technological advances. To show Americans that this wasn’t that case, the government decided to put a Redstone rocket in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal. Unfortunately, they made a mistake by not measuring how high the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal actually is before building the rocket. When the rocket was put in place, it made a hole in the ceiling that is still there today.
One of the biggest tourist attractions of Grand Central Terminal is the ceiling in its main concourse. On the ceiling there are many astronomical figures like stars within constellations as well as images of the zodiac signs. A commuter who happened to be an amateur astronomer later noticed that the ceiling is illustrated backwards. It is unknown why this mistake happened but as time went on and the ceiling was replaced and renovated, Preservationists fought to keep it the same.