Grand Central Terminal, one of the main railroad stations in New York City, features public art by a variety of artists. Through its status as a transportation and architectural icon, the terminal has also been depicted in many works of art.
Grand Central features permanent works of art, including the celestial ceiling in the Main Concourse, the Glory of Commerce work and the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt in front of the building's south facade, and the two cast-iron eagle statues adorning the terminal's facades. As well, Vanderbilt Hall is regularly used for temporary art exhibitions and events. The Dining Concourse has a series of lightboxes also used to display temporary art exhibits. The terminal is also known for its performance and installation art, including flash mobs and other spontaneous events.
Artwork on display or part of the terminal Facade Glory of Commerce
The Glory of Commerce sculptural group rests atop the terminal's facade, directly above a broken pediment featuring a large clock. The work is also known as Progress with Mental and Physical Force or Transportation. It is about tall, wide, and weighs about . At its unveiling in 1914, the work was considered the largest sculptural group in the world.
The work includes representations of Minerva, Hercules, and Mercury. The sculptures were designed by French sculptor Jules-Félix Coutan and carved by the John Donnelly Company. Coutan created the model in his Paris studio and shipped it to New York City later.
Mercury is standing at the top center of the work, depicted traditionally with a caduceus and wearing a winged helmet, with loose drapery concealing otherwise complete nudity. He is standing in a contrapposto pose in front of an eagle, wings outstretched, peering around his right leg. Two other gods are depicted to Mercury's left and right: the male figure to his right is typically and officially deemed to be Hercules, though he lacks the god's characteristic club and lionskin. Instead, the god is depicted among an anchor, cogwheel, anvil and hammer, a beehive, grapes, wheat ears and a sickle. Many of these are symbols of Vulcan, who is depicted with Minerva and Mercury in other works. He is also nearly naked, staring at Mercury above him. The female figure, Minerva, is resting her head on her left arm, looking down at a roll of parchment on her lap. She is depicted among a globe, a measuring compass, volumes of books and thick wreaths of laurel.
The work is seen as attempting to fulfill several goals: portraying the terminal itself as a new technology, representing the Vanderbilt family, and serving as an artistic piece to parallel European art and architecture of the time.
Clock
There is a clock on top of the south facade. It was installed in 1914 by the Self Winding Clock Company. The clock face has decorative stained glass framed in bronze, with cast-iron clock hands, the latter weighing 340 lbs. The center of the clock features a circular panel with a sunburst design. The glass work also features twelve Roman numerals to designate the time; its numeral "IIII" is traditional for clock faces displaying the number four, instead of the more common "IV". The numeral "VI", on the bottom of the clock, hides a flap that is used for maintenance. The clock mechanics are accessed via several ladders, reached from a door in the Operations Control Center. Access requires security clearance, limiting the number of visitors; these select few traditionally write their names on the clock room walls in permanent markers.
The clock has a "Tiffany-style" design. Despite modern sources describing the clock as a work of Tiffany Studios or Tiffany & Co., the work is unsigned, and the latter company could not confirm the claim. Most sources that describe the clock in detail do not label it a Tiffany piece, and books published by the Tiffany companies make no mention of the clock. Tiffany Studios was employed to create metalwork for the terminal in the 1900s, though clockwork and glass were attributed to numerous other contractors.
Statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt
A statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, longtime owner of the New York Central, stands at the center of the terminal's south facade, directly below its clock and facing the Park Avenue Viaduct. The work was sculpted by Ernst Plassmann, and is of bronze, tall and weighing 4 tons, with a 9-foot-tall granite pedestal. It depicts Vanderbilt bareheaded and in his commonly-seen winter clothes, including a heavy double-breasted and fur-trimmed overcoat. He is posed in a noble way, described as Jeffersonian, with one hand on his chest and another outstretched. It was the largest bronze statue cast in the United States at the time.
The statue was created as part of a bronze bas-relief on the facade of the Hudson River Railroad depot at St. John's Park in the present-day neighborhood of Tribeca. The bas-relief was long and depicted various components of Vanderbilt's life, including his steamships and trains. The relief and statue were generally designed by Albert De Groot, a steamship captain under Vanderbilt, though they were sculpted by Plassmann.
Unveiled and dedicated in November 1869, the works received much criticism from newspapers and other writers; the New York Times said such a tribute ought to include "the dismembered bodies of men, women and children" killed in the New York Central's open railyards to the north.
This criticism may have convinced Vanderbilt to abandon his plans for another statue of himself, to have been installed at Grand Central Depot, which was built in 1871. The planned statue was to have been part of a grouping designed by De Groot with a sailor at one side and Native American at the other.
In 1929, Plassmann's statue was moved to Grand Central Terminal. Once again, it received criticism in the press.
Eagles
Grand Central Terminal has two cast-iron eagle statues on display. The eagles weigh about each, have a wingspan of about , and are perched on stone spheres.
They are two of the 11 or 12 eagle statues that ornamented the terminal's predecessor, Grand Central Station. In 1910, when the station was demolished to build Grand Central Terminal, the eagles were dispersed throughout the city and New York state. By 1913, two were at the Philipse Manor station in Sleepy Hollow, New York, one was on the lawn of a wealthy resident of Mount Vernon, and the rest were on other estates, purchased from wreckers or taken from those with influence over the railroads.
The two eagles that sit atop the terminal were donated to the MTA around the turn of the 21st century. One had stood for years in a backyard in Bronxville, New York; in 1999, it was placed atop the Lexington Avenue entrance to Grand Central Market. The other was at a monastery in Garrison, New York (the present-day Garrison Institute), and was installed in 2004 at the terminal's southwest entrance by Vanderbilt Avenue and 42nd Street.
Eight identical eagle statues are elsewhere, including one at a private home in Kings Point, New York; one at the Space Farms Zoo and Museum in Beemerville, New Jersey; two at the Vanderbilt Museum in Long Island; one, known as the "Shandaken Eagle", in Phoenicia, New York; two at Saint Basil Academy in Garrison; and one at the Philipse Manor station in Sleepy Hollow. One or two of Grand Central Station's eagles remain lost.
New York City's former Penn Station was adorned with 22 eagle sculptures, many of which were similarly dispersed across the United States after the building's demolition.
Interior Ceiling
The Main Concourse's ceiling is an elliptical barrel vault. A false ceiling of square boards, installed in 1944, bears an elaborate celestial mural painted with more than 2,500 stars and several bands in gold set against a turquoise backdrop. This ceiling covers the original 1913 version, which had degraded because of water damage.
Original plans called for the ceiling to contain a skylight, but money and time ran out. Instead, a mural was painted directly on the ceiling. It was conceived in 1912 by architect Warren and painter Paul César Helleu. The latter, who had come to the United States for a three-month stay to create portraits of eight women for a Parisian magazine, sketched a conceptual design for Warren. Helleu worked from a chart given by Columbia University astronomy professor Harold Jacoby, who had derived it from the Uranometria, a scientifically accurate star atlas published in 1603. The mural was painted in 1913 by James Monroe Hewlett and Charles Basing of Hewlett-Basing Studio. They were assisted in the design by Helleu and multiple astronomers, and in the painting by more than 50 painting assistants. Around 63 electric bulbs were installed to amplify the visual impact of the stars. The depicted constellations include those of the winter zodiac viewable from January to June, from Aquarius to Cancer. Also depicted are Pegasus, Triangulum Majus and Minus, Musca Borealis, and Orion, as well as two broad gold bands spanning the ceiling, representing the ecliptic and the equator. Triangulum Minus (not present on the original mural, but added in 1944) and Musca Borealis are the only constellations not taken from the Uranometria.
By the 1920s, the roof began to leak, damaging the mural with water and mold. Over the next two decades, the mural "faded to a hue something like that of a khaki shirt overdosed with Navy blue". In August 1944, New York Central covered the original ceiling with 4-by-8-foot cement-and-asbestos boards and painted them in a facsimile of the original mural. Unveiled in June 1945, the new mural contained less astronomical detail; it also lacked light bulbs to mimic stars. The boards' outlines remain visible today.
By the 1980s, the new ceiling was obscured by decades of grime. The dirt buildup was sometimes reported to be tar and nicotine from tobacco smoke, or diesel or coal soot from the trains in the terminal's train shed (though trains have utilized electric power in Manhattan since 1908). Spectroscopic examination revealed that it was made up of air pollutants from trucks and cars as well as soot and contaminants from incinerators and factories. As a general renovation of the terminal got underway, historians and preservationists called for the 1944 boards to be removed and the original ceiling mural restored. But Beyer Blinder Belle, the architecture firm that led the renovation, deemed the original mural irreversibly damaged and noted that the asbestos-laden boards would be hazardous to remove. So, starting in September 1996, the ceiling boards were cleaned and repainted. Lights were installed into the ceiling boards to imitate the stars, restoring a feature previously only seen from 1913 to 1944. A single dark patch near the crab constellation (representing Cancer) was left untouched by renovators to remind visitors of the grime that once covered the ceiling.
The ceiling bears a small dark circle amid the stars above the image of Pisces. In a 1957 attempt to improve public morale after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, an American Redstone missile was set up in the Main Concourse. With no other way to erect the missile, a hole was cut into the 1944 false ceiling to allow a cable to be lowered to lift the rocket into place. Historical preservation dictated that this hole remain as a reminder of the many uses of the Terminal over the years.