History
Grand Central Station is an icon of American history and is the third station operated from this site. The first ever station located in this area was the Harlem Railroad, a steam railroad that started from Fourth Avenue and rode across Harlem.
The second station at the site was Grand Central Depot in 1871, owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, a railroad tycoon. It served the Hudson River, the New York Central Railroad, and Harlem. This L-shaped depot station soon became overwhelmed by the rapidly growing railroad requirements of the city and was demolished in 1899 to be replaced by a much bigger building named Grand Central Station. The construction of the new station building started in 1903 and lasted over ten years.
The new station construction practices and methods were a turning point in real estate building projects across New York City. Construction was carefully carried out to protect the air rights of the streets in Midtown Manhattan by building the new station entirely underground. The station used top-notch engineering practices that used electricity instead of steam to generate power. The 70-acre compound used to construct the new building for Grand Central Station was the biggest construction project in history. It was the first completely electric building in the world. In 2008, six full-time workers were needed to replace more than 4,000 traditional electric bulbs in the building with energy-efficient fluorescent ones.
The new terminal had an immense impact on the overall economic growth of New York City. In particular, Terminal City, a business and office district built above where the tracks were covered, benefited from the terminal’s influence on the surrounding area’s development.
