New York's Grand Central Terminal beckons weary travelers
As I mentioned last week, in exactly one more week I'll be in New York as a guest of Brizo faucets. Brizo is flying me and 18 other designer/ bloggers to attend a product education seminar and a Fashion Week runway show by the designer Jason Wu. This promises to be an event that will live on in story and myth for centuries, and that's no exaggeration. In the interest of keeping the FCC off my back I need to state loudly and clearly that Brizo is picking up the tab for this excursion. And to that I'd like to add thank God for Brizo .
My itinerary arrived yesterday and as was the case last September when I went to this same event, I'll be spending the weekend at the 70 Park Avenue Hotel in Manhattan's Murray Hill neighborhood. The hotel, as the name would suggest, is on Park Avenue at 38th Street. Four blocks to the north is New York's famed Grand Central Terminal . Inside the Terminal, on the east balcony, is Charlie Palmer's Métrazur . My fellow attendees at the Brizo event and I will be dining at Métrazur next Thursday night.
I was looking over the menu last night and I cannot wait to try the place. The restaurant looks incredible, and it's impossible to beat the location. Grand Central Terminal is another one of New York's great buildings. By extension, that makes it one of the world's great buildings.
If I have been to stroll out the front door of the resort in which I'll be and stand inside the center of Park Avenue then look north, right here's what I'd see.
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Grand Central Terminal sits inside the center of Park Avenue at 42nd Street. Since the constructing opened in 1913 (after a 10 year construction), The south facade has risen up from Park Avenue like a Beaux-Arts mirage. From the outdoor, you would never imagine that beneath that constructing is the worlds biggest educate station. Grand Central Terminal occupies forty eight acres in overall. Now that, is a massive constructing.
At the top of the south facade is the station's clock. At 13 feet in circumference, it's also the largest example of Tiffany glass in the world. Surrounding the clock is a statue depicting Mercury with Minerva and Hercules alongside him. To give you a sense of the scale, zoom in on the Terminal's facade in the Street View above. That statuary and clock grouping is 48 feet high. There's a great blog called Which Yet Survive , and it's all about Manhattan statuary. Here's a great post about the Mercury statue if you'd like to read more about it.
The terminal was nearly torn down in 1968 and threats to demolish it led to the establishment of the US historical preservation movement. The drive to save Grand Central Terminal .enlisted some pretty high profile supporters, most notably Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis.
Once saved, the building languished in a kingdom of filthy disrepair for many years. The good sized windows have been so caked with dirt that no mild surpassed through them. The incredible ceiling had emerge as so covered with the residue of 70 years of tobacco smoke that the mural of the constellations could not be seen. The building become restored to its original glory in 1998, after a 4-yr renovation.
It's an excellent shape, and it is most simply one that is etched into the American psyche. The eighty,000 rectangular foot fundamental concourse has been in greater films than pretty much every other vicinity within the metropolis. From North with the aid of Northwest to I am Legend, there usually appears to be a great excuse to film inner that constructing. Dreamworks even labored in an lively version of it inside the film Madagascar.
So the next time you're in New York, or maybe it'll be the first time you're in New York, it doesn't really matter either way. What does matter is that you find your way to Park and 42nd. Once inside the building, walk into the main concourse and just look up. Spin in a slow circle if you want to, I always do. Just look up into that cerulean sky and marvel. Who cares that everybody'll know you're a tourist? You'll never see any of them again anyhow. So as you're doing your slow spin, thank the Vanderbilts for leaving behind such an incredible legacy.
But wait! There's greater! After you're performed having a second under the ones 125 foot high ceilings, discover this passage simply off the primary concourse.
The area under that arch has the most amazing acoustics you'll ever experience. It's called the Whispering Gallery, and this intrepid Manhattan blogger describes it better than I can. Grand Central Station's Hidden Acoustical Wonder . Amazing!
All images and a handful of the factoids about the terminal are from Wikipedia.