4 Responses

  1. Jennifer says:

    Dear Emily,

    Thank you so much for this blog post. I was a long-time commuter but now no longer commute through Grand Central’s hallowed halls. I wish I could have been there on the centennial but could not. However, the next best thing was to live vicariously through your blog.

    Thank you,
    Jennifer

  2. Michael Napolitano says:

    Great work, and I loved the poem. Will be following your blog in the future, and I’m especially interested in the Grand Central of the 40’s and 50’s (before the demise of passenger rail).

  3. Jeff M. says:

    Emily,
    Stellar job (not a reference to the ceiling!) as usual. You’ve done GCT proud.

    I actually purchased and read Sam Roberts’ book, “Grand Central – How A Train Station Transformed America.” It is quite enjoyable, especially the early history of the terminal and his weaving in fascinating connections and tidbits about many of the historical characters from the period of its creation. (Part of the reason I bought it was the fact it has a Foreword by Pete Hamill — who I used to enjoy when he was a columnist back in the 60s — which oddly seemed to have little to do with the book, and only tenuously anything to do with GCT.)

    But, in fact, I probably wouldn’t have gotten it at all if I weren’t already so familiar with many of the facts about the terminal, and primed in anticipation of the centennial, as a result of YOUR posts. So I was bummed when I didn’t find a single reference or acknowledgement of your extraordinary work! Perhaps it’s just a generational thing; in the entire bibliography, he has exactly ONE reference to a website (and that’s ancestry.com, which somehow was a source of information about the 1902 Park Avenue Tunnel Collision).

    Thus your absence from the VIP list does not entirely surprise me. I’m sure Mr. Roberts was in attendance, and undoubtedly Mr. Hamill as well. I concur with your note about the exclusion of “lowly commuters” and see this as yet another example of how little has changed since the days of the Robber Barons. The wealthy gentry get together to congratulate themselves on their magnanimity for letting the rest of us use their terminal!

    Your fan,
    Jeff M.

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