#gct

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Grand Central Terminal (GCT; also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as Grand Central) is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Grand Central is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York metropolitan area. It also contains a connection to the New York City Subway at Grand Central–42nd Street station. The terminal is the third-busiest train station in North America, after New York Penn Station and Toronto Union Station.

The distinctive architecture and interior design of Grand Central Terminal's station house have earned it several landmark designations, including as a National Historic Landmark. Its Beaux-Arts design incorporates numerous works of art. Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions, with 21.6 million visitors in 2018, excluding train and subway passengers. The terminal's Main Concourse is often used as a meeting place, and is especially featured in films and television. Grand Central Terminal contains a variety of stores and food vendors, including upscale restaurants and bars, two food halls, and a grocery marketplace.

Grand Central Terminal was built by and named for the New York Central Railroad; it also served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and, later, successors to the New York Central. Opened in February 2, 1913, the terminal was built on the site of two similarly-named predecessor stations, the first of which dates to 1871. Grand Central Terminal served intercity trains until 1991, when Amtrak began routing its trains through nearby Penn Station. The East Side Access project, which will bring Long Island Rail Road service to a new station beneath the terminal, is expected to be completed in late 2022.

Grand Central covers 48 acres (19 ha) and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world. Its platforms, all below ground, serve 30 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower. In total, there are 67 tracks, including a rail yard and sidings; of these, 43 tracks are in use for passenger service, while the remaining two dozen are used to store trains. Another eight tracks and four platforms are being built on two new levels deep underneath the existing station as part of East Side Access.

Grand Central Terminal has been the subject, inspiration, or setting for literature, television and radio episodes, and films.

Many film and television productions have included scenes shot in the terminal. The MTA hosts about 25 large-scale and hundreds of smaller or amateur productions every year. Kyle McCarthy, who handles production at Grand Central, said, "Grand Central is one of the quintessential New York places. Whether filmmakers need an establishing shot of arriving in New York or transportation scenes, the restored landmark building is visually appealing and authentic." Especially during World War II, Grand Central has been a backdrop for romantic reunions between couples. After the terminal declined in the 1950s, it was more frequently used as a dark, dangerous place, even a metaphor for chaos and disorientation, featuring chase scenes, shootouts, homeless people, and the mentally ill. In the 1990 film The Freshman, for example, Matthew Broderick's character stumbles over an unconscious man and watches fearfully as petty crimes take place around him.

Almost every scene in the terminal's train shed was shot on Track 34, one of the few platforms without columns.

The first filmed scene in which Grand Central Terminal appears may be the 1909 short comedy Mr. Jones Has a Card Party. The terminal's first cinematic appearance was in the 1930 musical film Puttin' On the Ritz, and its first Technicolor appearance was in the 1953 film The Band Wagon. Some films from the 20th century, including Grand Central Murder, The Thin Man Goes Home, Hello, Dolly!, and Beneath the Planet of the Apes used reconstructions of Grand Central, built in Hollywood, to stand in for the terminal. Additionally, the terminal was drawn and animated for use in the animated films Madagascar (2005) and Wreck-It Ralph (2012).

Other films in which the terminal appears include:

Twentieth Century (1934)

Spellbound (1945)

Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950)

North by Northwest (1959)

Seconds (1966)

The Out-of-Towners (1970)

The French Connection (1971)

Necrology (1971)

A Stranger Is Watching (1982)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

The Cotton Club (1984)

The House on Carroll Street (1988)

The Fisher King (1991)

The Prince of Tides (1991)

Carlito's Way (1993)

One Fine Day (1996)

The Ice Storm (1997)

Armageddon (1998)

Men in Black II (2002)

I Am Legend (2007)

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Arthur (2011)

Friends with Benefits (2011)

The Avengers (2012)

The Girl on the Train (2016)

The Commuter (2018)

John Wick: Chapter 3 (2019)

Notable documentaries about the terminal include Grand Central, a 1982 film narrated by James Earl Jones and featuring Philip Johnson and Ed Koch.

On October 19, 2017, several of these films were screened in the terminal for an event created by the MTA, Rooftop Films, and the Museum of the Moving Image. The event featured a cinematic history lecture by architect and author James Sanders.

Grand Central Terminal's architecture, including its Main Concourse clock, are depicted on the stage of Saturday Night Live, an NBC television show. The soundstage reconstruction of the terminal in Studio 8H was first installed in 2003.

Literature featuring the terminal includes Report on Grand Central Terminal, written in 1948 by nuclear physicist Leo Szilard; The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger; The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Grand Central Murder by Sue MacVeigh, which was made into the eponymous film in 1942; A Stranger Is Watching by Mary Higgins Clark; and the 1946 children's classic The Taxi That Hurried by Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The infrastructure in Grand Central inspired the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and in turn, the film Hugo. The dangerous life of homeless men and women in Grand Central and its tunnels and passageways inspired Lee Stringer's Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street and Tina S.' collaboration with journalist Jamie Pastor Bolnick in the autobiography Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station.

Grand Central Station, an NBC radio drama set at the terminal, ran from 1937 to 1953. Among the video games that feature the terminal are Marvel's Spider-Man, True Crime: New York City, and Tom Clancy's The Division.