The Secrets of Grand Central Terminal in New York City | The New York Times

[Music] Hi l not much I'm talking to a wall what about you sh can you keep a secret this is the whispering Gallery in Grand Central terminal in New York it's an acoustical Marvel that allows a person to whisper into the wall that bounces across a vaated tile ceiling and you can hear the person at the other end about 30 or 40 ft away it's one of those great SE of Grand Central [Music] [Applause] [Music] Terminal I'm Sam Roberts of the New York Times Grand Central is celebrating its Centennial in February it's opened in 1913 this was the gateway to the continent for so many people so many ideas so much culture it just captures people's imagination in ways that almost no no other building in New York can it is emblematic of New York because it created Park Avenue it also created Midtown in New York this is now the busiest railroad terminal in the world the biggest in the world what's so fascinating about Grand Central is it's also a building that contains many Secrets everybody knows about the famous clock facing down Park Avenue from the front facade of Grand Central you can actually climb up to a tiny little room up ladders to access it this clock like all the clocks of Grand Central is set by atomic weight uh set by the national Observatory and it is extremely accurate 23 the train boards which list when the trains are leaving are always wrong they actually leave about a minute later than the time scheduled departure on the train boards it has the deepest basement in all of New York City deeper than the World Trade Center deeper than the Federal Reserve Bank I'm just coming out of a secret staircase right in the middle of the main Concourse of Grand Central in fact it's in the information booth this leads not to the sewers but to the lower level information booth you have your tickets all right h and of course the biggest mistake in Grand Central is the ceiling it was discovered by one commuter not long after Grand Central open the sky is backwards an astronomer at Columbia University gave a chart to the painters but he probably thought that they were going to hold it over their heads to paint in fact they put it down and therefore what we have is sort of a Heavenly View of the stars then look at the stars from above rather than a look at the stars from the main Concourse itself last year 82 million passengers came through Grand Central when the terminal was opened in 1913 the projections were that it would be able to handle a 100 million it's now on the verge of doing that which just goes to show what a miracle brand Central was an engineering Miracle a landmark Miracle when it was built a century [Music] ago [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: The New York Times

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Keywords: grand central, grand central terminal, grand central station, the secrets of grand central, sam roberts, subway, subways, subways stations, new york, central station, grand central nyc, grand central ny, grand central facility, grand central new york, New York City, New York, NYC, Manhattan, Grand, Central, Terminal, Train, Station, Train Station, The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting

Id: 99buqSVBuOo

Length: 3min 37sec (217 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 18 2013