Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-01-16/In focus
Busting into Grand Central
Everything you're ever told in a tour is wrong. Well, maybe not everything, but stories and ideas turn into facts, which telephone-game into new facts. For a historian who loves to tour historic sites, it's a deeply concerning notion.
If you've ever taken a guided tour of Grand Central Terminal in New York City, I humbly hope you will put aside what you've learned. It's been my single largest project to rewrite this Wikipedia entry – on one of the busiest train stations in the country – and find out the truth behind widely repeated myths. I teamed up with about a half-dozen other Wikipedians, historians, journalists, and photographers to find the truth and write out this immense project. It's there that we began myth-busting most of the modern works about Grand Central.
There's four bold statements, repeated in semi-official tours of the terminal (and especially for its centennial in 2013) that we'll cover in this article. Journalists attending the celebratory events that year are responsible for repeating these statements. They've stood out as so unbelievable that I felt they warranted looking into.
- Grand Central has a four-sided clock in the center of its Main Concourse, made of the precious gem opal, and worth $10 to 20 million.
- The front of the terminal has a massive clock, designed by Tiffany Studios, and the largest Tiffany clock in the world.
- The terminal's secret sub-basement, holding an electrical substation that powers the terminal and its tracks, was a target of the Nazis during World War II, which they failed to sabotage.
- The terminal's famous constellation ceiling is backwards, either on purpose "the way the Gods would see the stars" or by mistake "Oops the reference sketch was held at my feet, not at the ceiling".
I'm hoping to better establish a permanent record on these. Let's dive into the first tale. While some sources have identified it as
The third "fact" is a little trickier. All good lies have some truth to them. The M42 sub-basement and power station actually was an area of concern during World War II, according to reputable author Sam Roberts. Its entrances were patrolled by armed guards, and the space was removed from any floor plans of the building. He even claims the saboteurs met in the terminal, by its information booth and in its newsreel theater. These facts are themselves somewhat questionable, though the reliable source merits their inclusion in the M42 article. But any ideas of a failed sabotage event taking place there are debunked by Roberts in his Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America. The more obvious falsehood is about secrecy: the station was far from secret, it was even advertised! It saw an incredible amount of press coverage over the century.
The fourth myth is perplexing. Every source states something similar, but different. It is a plain fact that several of the constellations are correct, and some are reversed, along with the overall arrangement on the ceiling. So the ceiling is neither fully correct or fully backwards. A pamphlet from when the terminal opened claimed "it is safe to say that many school children will go to the Grand Central Terminal to study this representation of the heavens." So at least some of the New York Central Railroad's staff believed the mural to be correct. What's great is you can read The New York Times' March 1913 account of a Westchester commuter who noticed the constellation mistakes, not even a month after the station opened in 1913. I believe the Vanderbilts claimed the mural to represent a "divine perspective" as a cover-up for such a literally massive mistake. So there's never been agreement over what's incorrect or why, and the only way I imagine finding the truth is if some of the artists, painters, or astronomers had some private notes or journals. All of the explanations either involve disinterest in the technicalities, finger-pointing, or the boisterous claim that it was intentionally incorrect.
My takeaway is, why even bother making up or believing in such tall tales? The strongly-documented history of the terminal is an interesting story enough. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
Discuss this story
Interesting read! Urban truths stranger than legends are always fascinating...
And I would also argue for the inclusion of a fifth myth,
Awesome write-up and great research! This was a joy to read ^_^ ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 13:42, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]