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12.18.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
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day I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated December
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twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio I is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the article New York's Grand
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Central Terminal helped provide the blueprint for American cities. It
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happened by accident. A train wreck that caused the death
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of more than a dozen commuters near the turn of
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the twentieth century was the impetus behind a monumental project
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that changed the urban landscape. By Michele Stacy. Early on
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the morning of January eighth, nineteen o two, two young women,
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Sadie Scott and Minnie Rice, stood on a snow covered
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train platform in New Rochelle, New York, waiting for the
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seven forty eight a M Express that would take them
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to their jobs astenographers in New York City. Near By
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stood F. S. Cowdrey, a banker on Wall Street, and
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twenty one year old H. Frank Crosby, who worked at
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the American Locomotive Company on Broad Street. It was the
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dawn of the commuter age, and the passengers were pioneers
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of the suburbs, traveling daily to the Rising sky Line,
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some twenty miles to the south. Not long before, their
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hamlet of New Rochelle had been a tony resort destination
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for wealthy city dwellers. By eighteen ninety, though, it had
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been transformed into what the New York Times called a
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perfect nest of metropolitan commuters thanks to the railroads that
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served it. Even the sobriquet commuter had been supplied by
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the train system. A railroad superintendent on the New York
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Central Line remembered only as M. Sloat, noticed the number
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of repeat customers and proposed giving riders discounts for monthly
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and yearly tickets. The full fare was commuted, and with
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as one bold entrepreneurial stroke, the railroad commuter in name,
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at the very least, was officially born, writes Sam Roberts
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in Grand Central How a train station transformed America. When
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the train from Danbury, Connecticut arrived at seven forty eight,
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the crowd flooded into the two rear cars, which were
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reserved for New Rochelle passengers, who were among the last
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to board before New York. Several would be travelers who
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missed their usual train would later wonder at their good luck.
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The train pulled away and began its rush toward the
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city and the final leg of the run. The Park
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Avenue Tunnel notorious for its heat, soot, and fumes. Park
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Avenue was not yet the elegant boulevard of to day.
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Coal powered locomotives ran down the street's center day and night,
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belching steam and smoke. In the face of public complaints,
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a half hearted effort had been made to improve the situation.
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In the eighteen seventies, the powerful and wealthy Vanderbilt family,
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which owned the New York Central Line and the railroad
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right of way on Park Avenue, agreed to lower a
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portion of the tracks to just below street level and
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cover part of the route south of ninety second Street
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down to the train depot on forty second. That created
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a shallow tunnel of sorts, in effect, a roof over
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the tracks, with occasional events for the smoke and steam
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to escape. But the salutary effects on Park Avenue were negligible,
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and the improvement created a new hazard, The dark, smoky
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tunnel itself. At eight twenty a m. That January morning,
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the train from Danbury was stopped in the tunnel under
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fifty sixth Street waiting for a go ahead signal, when
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another train, an express from suburban White Plains, smashed into
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it from behind. The passenger cars of the Danbury train
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took the full brunt of the collision, while the heavy
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White Plains locomotive was relatively unscathed. The engineer later said
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he had been blinded by smoke and steam, which caused
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him to miss the red lights signaling him to stop.
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The result was horrific. The engine of the White Plain's
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express plowed half way into the last car of the
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train traveling through New Rochelle, its boiler, landing amid passengers,
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spewing steam and coals. Windows shattered, wood, splintered, seats, and
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the people in them were crushed. An account in the
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Boston Daily Globe noted that, according to survivors, the two
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ends of the car moved together like the ends of
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an accordion, until of the long car all there was
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left was a space nine feet long, in which was
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jammed passengers and seats in a hideous tangle of mangled misery.
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On the street above by standers heard the collision and
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the screams for help, and some joined policemen and firemen
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in clambering down ladders into the wreck. Fire Fighters used
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axes to chop their way into the ruined car, driven
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by the moans and cries of passengers. Acting fire Chief
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Thomas Friel told the Globe women and men dead and
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injured lay on top of each other in all positions.
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Clergymen and doctors from nearby churches and hospitals climbed down
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into the inferno to comfort the injured, give last rites
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to the dying, and try to save those they could.
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Many volunteers were working like surgeons on a battlefield. The
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Globe reported, describing one doctor's white hospital gown as red
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from blood from his collar to the hem on his trousers.
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Sadie Scott and many Rice had been sitting together and
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the force of the collision threw Rice part way out
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a window. Both were trapped by the wreckage. They stayed
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calm as rescuers worked to free them. Don't tell our folks,
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we are much hurt, one said, as they were finally extracted.
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Before they were taken to the hospital with wounds to
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their heads and legs. F S Cowdrey, sitting in the
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second to last car, was reading the paper when he
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heard a tremendous crash and found himself pinned between two
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shattered seats. He groped his way through a cloud of
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steam and climbed through a window, then helped two women escape.
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Young Frank Crosby was not as lucky. He was counted
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as one of the fifteen killed that day. Two died
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later of their injuries. When Crosbie's father, mother, and three
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sisters learned the news at the new Rochelle train station.
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Both parents fainted from the shock. Around forty others were injured,
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some gravely. A recently married couple, William and Amanda Howard,
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perished in the wreck. Their funeral was held in their home,
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with the caskets placed side by side where the two
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had stood when they were wed six months before. Amanda's
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death had been particularly heart breaking, as she was alive
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and being tended to by firefighter when the steam pipe
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that was trapping her burst and killed her. All of
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this was a tragedy foretold, says Kurt C. Schickling, author
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of Grand Central Terminal Railroads, Engineering and Architecture. In New
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York City, people had been warning for years there's going
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to be an accident, and when it happened, all hell
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broke loose. People wanted to indict the Vanderbilt family, and
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they demanded that steam engines in the city be eliminated.
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The tunnel disaster would become a turning point for the
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nation's largest city, altering its very geography. Out of the
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wreckage would emerge seemingly out of thin air, acres of
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new buildable land in the heart of the metropolis, which
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in turn enabled the creation of the storied Park Avenue
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of to day, with the glorious new Grand Central Terminal
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at its head. And beneath the new land and the terminal,
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engineers installed a revolutionary train track system that, in time,
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as it was copied across the country, helped drive the
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explosive growth of the suburbs, transforming American life for decades.
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The ripples of lasting change extended far beyond New York.
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In other ways, supercharging the growing popular backlash against the
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so called robber barons such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, who engaged
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in questionable business practices and amassed huge fortunes while putting
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profits above their workers and customers health and safety. The
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day after the accident. The tunnel crash was already a
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force for change. New Rochelle now a morning City, head
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lined the New York Times. The town's citizens were planning
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a meeting with their mayor to insist on better railroad safety.
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The indignation had a clear target, the Vanderbilt family, who
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owned the New York Central, Harlem and Hudson railroads, as
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well as the deadly Park Avenue tunnel, through which every
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line north of the city passed. The Times editorial page
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on January ninth to cried the slaughter in the tunnel
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and called out the railroad for its negligence. The people
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will not longer expose themselves to the appalling perils of
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the conditions under which the slothful and incompetent New York
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Central managers exercised the privileges of their franchise. New Jersey's
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Evening Record addressed the family directly. Don't you think you
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have killed enough people in your economy tunnel? It asked.
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The people will eventually decide to try some one of
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you Vanderbilt's, for plain murder. Several newspapers noted that two
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great grandsons of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Cornelius the Third and Alfred
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Gwynn Vanderbilt ran over from their nearby mansions after the
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crash to peer down into the tunnel, only to melt
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back out of the crowd. The Vanderbilts had for decades
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been emblematic of nineteenth century tooth and claw capitalism. The Commodore,
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as Cornelius was known, had risen to extreme wealth from
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humble roots on Staten Island, starting his own ferry service
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between the island and Manhattan in eighteen ten at the
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age of sixteen. He made his first fortune in shipping
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and steamboat travel, and his practices were so cutthroat and
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monopolistic that in eighteen fifty nine an editorial in The
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Times called out his predatory methods and compared him to
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those old German barons who, from their eyries along the
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Rhine swooped down upon the commerce of the noble river
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and rung tribute from every passenger that floated by. A
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decade later, in eighteen sixty nine, still long before the
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family faced an outcry over the crash, Mark Twain published
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an open letter to Commodore Vanderbilt in Packard's Monthly, in
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which Twain accused him of breaking the laws of your
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country and jeopardizing the lives of your passengers during his
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steamship days. You observe that I don't say anything about
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your soul, Vanderbilt, Twain wrote, it is because I have
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evidence that you haven't any By that time, the Commodore
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had seen the future in railroads and begun snapping them up.
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When he combined the Harlem, Hudson and New York Central
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lines in eighteen seventy, it created one of the largest
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corporations in American history. The Commodore's son and heir, William H. Vanderbilt,
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further tarnished the family's reputation in eighteen eighty two when
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he was quoted in The New York Times in response
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to a question about whether his train lines should keep
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the public's interests in mind. William said, the public be damned.
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I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about
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working for anybody's good. But our own railroads are not
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run on sentiment, but on business principles, and to pay.
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The public be damned. Comment was widely publicized, stoking outrage
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and becoming a rallying cry for social critics and the
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burgeoning populist movement, which went so far as to call
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for government ownership of the railroads. By the time of
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the Park Avenue tunnel accident, those progressive sentiments had a
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ready ear in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt was keenly
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sensitive to the public demand for restraints on corporations and
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to the need to contain their power, says T. J. Styles,
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author of the First Tycoon, The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
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The nineteen o two disaster highlighted a particular aspect of
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the effort to make corporations more accountable, the fact that
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they constructed what were essentially public works and provided an
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essential public service as common carriers. Schlichting, the author of
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Grand Central Terminal and a historian of New York, says
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the accident was also a wake up call for this
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cities growing middle and upper classes, many of whom were
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rail commuters. They felt the shock of that could happen
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to me, he says. The idea grew that we're going
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to regulate the way industry provides goods and services so
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they don't wreck people's lives. The clear way out of
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the tunnel dilemma was to replace the steam engines whose
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smoke had contributed to the crash, with the non polluting
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trains run on electricity. Electric power was still in its
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early days, first used in New York around eighteen eighty
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for large scale arc lights and public spaces like hotels, theaters,
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and streets. By eighteen eighty eight, the first streetcar line
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was converted from steam to electric power in Manhattan, followed
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by a similar system in Brooklyn in eighteen ninety two.
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But heavy duty railroading needed more voltage than relatively lightweight
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street cars, which required only about fifteen horses power. Schlichting
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says that's equivalent to a modern day lawnmower. By contrast,
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loaded railroad cars and heavy engines would need to be
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amped up to twenty five hundred horse power. In nineteen
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o two, this had only been accomplished once, when seven
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years earlier, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opened the first
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electrified main line railroad, covering a small stretch in the
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Howard Street Tunnel. The cost of redesigning and installing an
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electrified track system throughout New York City and the northern
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suburban area would be enormous, requiring extensive new infrastructure. The
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directors of the New York Central, which controlled all rail
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access from the North and down to Grand Central at
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forty second, realized they had no choice. Eight days after
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the accident, they announced a ten million dollar electrification plan.
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They acted ahead of the inevitable. In nineteen o three,
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both the city and st Date of New York outlawed
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steam locomotives in Manhattan effect of July first, nineteen o eight.
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But that daunting project was only the beginning of New
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York Central's problems. The existing Grand Central station, originally called
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a Depot, had opened at Midtown Manhattan in eighteen seventy
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one to great fanfare. It featured towering mansard roofs and
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a soaring train shed topped with an enormous glass and
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iron dome, at the time the largest interior space in
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North America. But though it was built to last a century,
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by nineteen o two it was already hopelessly outdated, disorganized,
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and overwhelmed by surging numbers of passengers. Meanwhile, north of
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Grand Central was a vast open train yard, a mass
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of tracks spanning about twenty three acres, occupying blocks and
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blocks in the center of a bustling metropolis. The train
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yard was not only an eye sore, It also created
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an impenetrable barrier between the east and west sides of
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an increasingly busy area that was rapidly filling with new
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homes and businesses. These related challenges presented an opportunity for
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a visionary and New York Central had won in its
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midst the railroad's largely self taught chief engineer, William J. Wilgos.
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The son of a freight agent at New York Central's
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Buffalo station, Wilgos had from a young age been fascinated
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with engineering and what he later called its mathematical exactitude
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and esthetic charm. Those qualities found expression in the Grand
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Central project and many other wilgs ventures that followed, including
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the Holland Tunnel. As Schlichting relates in his twenty twelve biography,
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Grand Central's engineer. With no family money to fund a
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college education, Wilgos apprenticed with a civil engineer for two years,
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learning engineer mathematics and mechanical drafting. By age thirty four,
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he had worked his way up to the top engineering
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spot at New York Central, despite an outspokenness that often
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put him at odds with those in power in nineteen
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o two. Wilgs immediately set his mind to solving the
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unprecedented problems facing New York Central. Suddenly there came a
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flash of light, he wrote years later, it was the
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most daring idea that had ever occurred to me. Wilgas
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laid out his ambitious scheme in a three page memo
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to the Central's president. First, sink all of the tracks
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coming into Manhattan deep below the ground, only possible once
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they were running on non polluting electricity. In addition, stacked
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them on top of each other to create two levels,
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one for commuter trains and one for long distance, allowing
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the four tracks that enter Manhattan in Harlem to expand
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to more than forty as they approached Grand Central. And finally,
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to service the new underground infrastructure, build a new, larger,
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even grander terminal designed to handle an ever increasing ridership,
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which had risen three hundred percent in the previous three
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decades alone. The whole thing was a technological leap, an
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unbelievably complicated feat of engineering, Schlichting says, and it was
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going to cost of fortune. Three million cubic yards of
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earth and rock would need to be dug up and
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carted out of Midtown Manhattan, and an electrical power system
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created to accommodate new locomotives. Wilgos estimated a total outlay
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of thirty five million dollars, nearly half the Central's annual
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revenue of eighty two million, an estimate that rose in
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the following years to upwards of seventy one million. The
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price tag initially staggered his bosses, but Wilgos followed up
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with an ingenious way to pay for it, a concept
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he called taking wealth from the air literally. Wilgs proposed
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using the ancient but rarely implemented concept of air rights,
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which dated to early English common law, based on a
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Latin maxim that said to whomever the soil belongs, he
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also owns to the sky and to the depths. Once
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the much maligned train yards were buried in the ground
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and covered with heavily reinforced girders and pavement, Wilgus argued
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the resulting real estate, already owned and being used profitably
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by New York Central, could be leased to developers, thus
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reaping additional millions in perpetuity, Unlike simply owning or buying
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land and leasing it out. Air rights provided a legal
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way to double dip run a profitable train business underground
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and also profit from what were formerly unbuildable acres overhead,
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and that is exactly what happened. The sky scrapers on
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Park Avenue today don't sit directly on land. Schlichten says.
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They're perched above the two massive cement terminals that Wilgs belt.
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They have no basements. Wilgas had outlined an entire city
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within a city built on the reclaimed land, and it
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arose within two decades after the opening of the new
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Grand Central Terminal in nineteen thirteen. Eventually the neighbourhood included
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hotels like the Biltmore, Commodore, Ritz, Carlton, Waldorf, Astoria, Roosevelt,
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and Park Lane, some long gone and iconic office buildings
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like the Helmsley originally the New York Central Headquarters and
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the Chrysler Building. Park Avenue was reborn, destined to become
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a grand Dame of American boulevards, a street lined with
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luxury apartment buildings and sky high corporate towers with flower
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beds running up its center median for miles. In nineteen
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thirty five, newspaper editor and writer Arthur Bartlett Maurice Rode,
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the story of Park Avenue is the old story of Cinderella.
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Yesterday a kitchen drudge of a street, today a resplendent princess,
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and the fairy godmother who waved the wand and wrought
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The change was electrification. If Park Avenue is Cinderella in
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that metaphor, the magnificent Grand Central emerges as the castle
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before it could be constructed, though eight years of back
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breaking work were required. In the spring of nineteen o three,
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the directors of New York Central faced, as Innovation and
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Technology magazine put it in twenty eleven, one of the
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young nation's first aging infrastructure dilemmas. Wilgas's solution was so
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forward thinking that more than a century later, almost all
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of the elements he proposed are still embodied in Grand
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Central Terminal. The project would ultimately involve demolishing more than
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two hundred buildings in the area, lasting through layers of
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of hard bed rock, and dismantling the glass topped train
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shed while trains still ran in and out below. Remarkably,
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the trains operated throughout the work, and ridership continued to
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climb the first all electric train left the old station
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building for the suburb of Yonkers on December eleventh, nineteen
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o six, about eighteen months ahead of the state's deadline. Finally,
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with the tracks completed, the new terminal began to rise
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in late nineteen eleven. What emerged was a wonder still
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one of the largest train stations in the world and
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estimated to be one of the ten most visited sites globally.
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Architect Frank J. Prile Junior, who worked on extensive renovations
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in the nineteen nineties, likens its famed main concourse to
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a cathedral, especially when the sun streams through its high
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arched windows. The defining characteristic of Grand Central Terminal is
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that it is embraces and celebrates movement of trains, of
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people walking through to the trains, and the street of
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cars that go up and around it. Pre Aal says,
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the way the building is oriented, it also celebrates the
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motion of the sun rising in the east and setting
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in the west, similar to a cathedral, Priyal says, Grand
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Central invites and honors this extraordinary collective energy, this gathering
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of people, this ability to be awestruck. The many eager
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viewers who gathered for the terminal's grand opening at midnight
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on February second, nineteen thirteen, were indeed in alle. The crowd,
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estimated by The New York Times to number more than
23:43
one hundred fifty thousand during the first twenty four hours,
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streamed in to cheer the first train to depart, which
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left for Boston at twelve o one a m. The
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Times editorial page hailed the terminal as a glory of
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the metropolis, whose beauty is chiefly that of mass and
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line and color, while another article pointed out that the
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rock bottom fact of the entire enterprise is the electric motor, powerful, swift,
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silent and clean. Wilgas was celebrated for his rigorous attention
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to detail, including one of his most brilliant innovations, the
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ramps that lead passengers down into the terminal, modeled after
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Julius Caesar's design for sloping chariot roads into Roman army
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camps grand centrals. Ramps spare travelers from the trials of stairs.
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Builders tested various degrees of incline. Every variety of person
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was induced to trudge up and down them and report
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the degree of approval or disapproval. The Times reported fat
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men and thin men women with long skirts, women with
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their arms full of bundles. All these tried the ramps.
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The final result was a slope said to be so
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gentle that if a child can tottle at all, it
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can tottle comfortably from a train to forty second Street.
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The estimated annual ridership at that time was fourteen million. Today,
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even without the storied long distance trains, which no longer
25:10
use the terminal, suburban customers alone total eighty two million.
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That number is growing with the latest renovation, completed in
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twenty twenty three, a Long Island railroad extension to bring
25:23
commuters from the suburbs east of Manhattan. Unlike the original
25:27
Grand Central depot, the current design has shown itself to
25:31
be endlessly adaptable and expandable, proving Priaul's dictum that Grand
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Central is continuously changing. In fact, Grand Central has continued
25:41
to change railways and cities in profound ways. Wilgas's innovative
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use of air rights spread to other cities, from Boston
25:50
and Chicago to Denver, Phoenix, and Seattle. In nineteen sixty eight,
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Grand Central's owner, by then called Penn Central, proposed building
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a fifty five story office tower above the terminal, destroying
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its silhouette and character. The local Landmarks Preservation Commission fought
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Penn Central's plan all the way to the Supreme Court,
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which in nineteen seventy eight upheld Grand Central's landmark status
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and protected it from the disfiguring skyscraper. Penn Central is
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the most important decision on historic preservation law ever rendered
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in the United States, wrote J. Peter Byrne of the
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Georgetown University Law Center in twenty twenty one. Preservation, in turn,
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has shaped leading US cities as they have taken on
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new identities in a post industrial society. Berne credits the
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pen decision with helping to rescue American cities from a
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mid century nadir of decay and decline, and ushering in
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what he calls new urbanism, mixed uses human scale walkability
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and contextualizing new buildings in a public realm of sidewalks
26:58
and squares. More recently, new urbanism seeks to reclaim industrial
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wastelands in the midst of cities. Think of New York
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City's high Line, created on abandoned New York Central freight
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train tracks, Atlanta's belt Line, and Chicago's six oh six Trail.
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All on land once given over to heavy industry. Here, too,
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Grand Central may play a role in changing the cityscape.
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Necessary renovation work on the century old tunnel infrastructure is
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prompting talk of a facelift for the stretch of Park
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Avenue that sits above it. City planners in vision restoring
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the boulevard's centre medians to the wider margins of the
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nineteen twenties before they were narrowed to allow more car traffic,
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and adding benches, walkways, lawns, perhaps even cafes. Pre All's
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vision of Grand Central Terminal as a place of collective
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experience that is endlessly adaptable into the future shows Wilgas's
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original nineteen o two flash of Light as remarkably pressure.
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This concludes readings from the Smithsonian magazine for today. Your
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reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and
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have a great day.