Quite a while ago I started up a minor project, what I called the Historical Archives. My goal was to collect as much old paper history of the Harlem Line and assemble a museum of sorts – timetables, maps, tickets, photos, and news articles – digitize it, and put it online for everyone to view, completely for free. (There are folks in the city that have better collections than I, such as the Transit Museum and the NYPL, but these are kept under lock and key, and you can’t have them unless you shell out the dollars.) Anyways, the more I added to the archives, the clunkier the directory page that listed all the entries got. I wanted to arrange it in a better way – especially the timetables. I’ve been working on just that for the past week or so, putting all the timetables in a special catalog that you can view with a short description and thumbnails. If you see something you like, you can click on it and go to the main entry for that item with a larger image. I think this is much easier.

In honor of the new catalog I thought it would be fun to show some of the earliest timetables that I have in the collection. The first is from 1871, when Cornelius Vanderbilt was still president of what was known as the New York and Harlem Railroad, with his son William Henry as vice president.

Note the first station is 26th Street, the first Grand Central Depot was only opened later in the year. At the time of publication Hartsdale was still known as Hart’s Corners, Hawthorne as Unionville, and Craryville as Bain’s. Bedford did not have the “Hills” added yet, and Purdey’s was the spelling used, as opposed to today’s Purdy’s.

The timetables below are from 1890, 1909 and 1914. The center timetable, from 1909, is important historically because at this time Grand Central Terminal was being constructed, as the older Depot was being demolished. Despite that, train service still needed to go on interrupted, and a temporary platform at Lexington Avenue was used. The timetable makes note of this on the front, directing riders to the temporary terminal.

Name evolution: After the New York and Harlem Railroad was leased to the New York Central, it was listed as the Harlem Division of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. Later the name was shortened to just the New York Central.

The timetables above are from 1922, 1931 and 1940 and list service to Lake Mahopac, a branch of the Harlem that diverged at Golden’s Bridge. Below are timetables from 1958 and 1964. Service on the Mahopac branch was discontinued in 1959, and so the timetable from 1958 is one of the last to list that service.

Not long after that 1964 timetable the New York Central merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad to form the Penn Central. Although the service was not the best, in my opinion the Penn Central had some of the nicer timetables in the collection. But that is a post for another Friday. Enjoy the day, and the weekend everyone!

As an additional note, I thank the Danbury Railway Museum’s library for giving me access to their collection of timetables to digitize. If anyone out there has some timetables that I don’t have listed, I would love it if you could contact me and send me a scan so I can add it into the catalog.

Whether you knew the name or not, if you’ve ever been to Grand Central or Penn Station, you are familiar with a Solari departure board. Since the 1950′s Solari boards have been installed in airports and train stations worldwide. Although most people refer to the original flap style boards as Solaris, the company also produces more modern LCD and LED display boards, such as the one that is now in Grand Central. On Monday I showed some photos from Union Station in New Haven, the last Metro-North location to have one of the Solari flap-style displays. Most unfortunately, that sign is going to be replaced. In honor of that board, and of Solari’s functional yet elegant contribution to rail and public transport, I thought I’d feature the history of the company this Friday.

Solari split-flap clocks. Silkscreened flaps. Massimo Paniccia, president of the Solari company.

Solari is based in Italy, and has roots back to the 1700′s, where they produced timepieces and later on, clocks for bell towers. The current incarnation of the name is from brothers Remigio and Fermo Solari, who broke from the original family business and established their own business also under the name Solari. Remigio was a self-taught engineer, and it was he who invented the iconic flap display which many are familiar with. The idea was used in both large and small scale: from large departure displays used by railroads and airports, to small clocks for the home.

Flap-style displays

The flap display was introduced in 1956, and was installed in airports and rail stations across the world. The design used various metal (and later, plastic) flaps with silkscreened information, all which were mounted on a wheel. Each wheel could hold up to 40 flaps. When the information on the board had to change, the wheel was rotated until the proper flap was displayed. With each flip, the board made a particular clack, which is so memorable to passengers that when Boston replaced their Solari flap display with an LED display in 2004, they kept the noise. It plays over a loudspeaker to alert passengers that the information has changed (Though I’ve heard from a commenter that it doesn’t do a very good job at imitating it).

Solari flap-style board in Grand Central

As a young girl I remember my first train ride on Amtrak: I was travelling with my grandmother from Penn Station to Jacksonville, Florida. I remember seeing that flap display in Penn Station, and being mesmerized. Today, that flap display is gone: it was replaced in 2000. Long Island Rail Road’s flap display, also in Penn Station, was replaced in 2003. During the New York Central days, Grand Central also had a Solari display, perhaps one of the most famous. I’ve tried digging up information about that board, but I had some difficulty. From what I can gather, that Solari display was later replaced by another split-flap display, though not made by Solari. This other board, called the Omega Board, was used by Metro-North until it was replaced during the station renovations in 1998. The current departure board in Grand Central was made by the Solari company, though it is one of the more modern LED-style boards.

Grand Central today, Solari LCD departure board visible on the left

The Solari display in New Haven’s Union Station, which will be removed shortly.

This week I figured I would talk about a rather important railroad figure, Cornelius Vanderbilt. He significantly shaped the early history of what are now known as the Hudson and Harlem lines. You may recognize the name, bordering Grand Central Terminal is Vanderbilt Avenue, and even inside the terminal, there is a Vanderbilt Hall. Many Vanderbilts that came after him was known only because of the fortune that Cornelius amassed in first steam boats, and then later, railroads. He wasn’t much of a philanthropist, but in his final years he donated money to what is now known as Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Apparently many students there have little clue for which Vanderbilt the school was named. This hardly surprises me, as supposedly some children nowadays think that it was Buzz Lightyear, that was the first person to walk on the moon.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was nicknamed the Commodore, certainly was an interesting character. In fact, if tabloids as they are now existed when Vanderbilt was alive, they would have loved him. Tiger Woods is absolutely nothing in comparison to Vanderbilt. Cornelius certainly enjoyed his prostitutes. It would be tabloid front page news!

His married life wasn’t much better. Both of his wives were in fact related to him, they were cousins. And even more strange, his first wife, Sophia Johnson, was a cousin on both his mother and his father’s side of the family. It was from one of his prostitutes that Vanderbilt acquired syphilis, which he spread to his wife. Though all of this occurred before penicilin existed. The preferred treatment for syphilis at the time was mercury.

Dementia brought on by late stages of syphilis marked the final years of Vanderbilt’s life. He had built his fortune with small ships, and later steam ships, but it nearly doubled when he got into the railroad business. However it is uncertain how much of this was of his own doing, or the work of his son, Billy. Vanderbilt had eight daughters and three sons. William, known as Billy, was designated as Vanderbilt’s heir. Cornelius hated the idea of his fortune getting split, so upon his death the majority of it was left to Billy. Billy was not his favorite son, however, and was Cornelius’ second choice as heir. George Washington Vanderbilt, Cornelius’ favorite son, died before he was twenty-five from tuberculosis after serving for a time in the Union Army during the Civil War. It was only after his death that Billy became the chosen heir. Vanderbilt’s other son, Cornelius Jeremiah, was essentially disowned. He was explicitly barred from ever referring to himself as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. He was an epileptic, which didn’t win him any favors from his harsh father. But it was his dealings in fraud that truly formed a wedge between himself and his father, who had little desire to pay for his fraudulent son’s debts.

After the death of George Washington Vanderbilt, Cornelius began to groom Billy in his role as heir to the Vanderbilt fortune. He was installed on the boards of various railroads that his father owned or influenced. In his later years Vanderbilt was not completely there due to syphilis’ effect on his brain. However the name Cornelius Vanderbilt instilled confidence to people involved in the industry. So he served much as a figurehead in his later years, with his son Billy making all the decisions. The building of Grand Central Depot was one of such actions.

In his later years, Cornelius married a far younger woman: Frank Crawford. The marriage, however, was mostly one of convenience. Frank was a distant cousin from Alabama who had very little money and ran the risk of becoming completely destitute. Billy on the other hand did not approve of some of the prostitutes that frequently ended up in his father’s bed, and thus desired his father to be married. In fact when Frank arrived as a guest of the Vanderbilts, her mother accompanied her. Vanderbilt’s family didn’t care which of the two he married, the mother or the daughter, but they did want him to marry one. Upon Cornelius’ death his wife received little of the man’s fortune, as Billy had arranged a prenuptial agreement prior to the marriage.

After Cornelius’ death the majority of his fortune was given to Billy, however several of his daughters, and his son Cornelius Jeremiah, contested the will. Their desire to have the fortune split more fairly amongst the Vanderbilt children failed, and not long after Cornelius Jeremiah committed suicide by putting a bullet in his brain.

Although Cornelius is long gone, he is forever in the history books because of the large fortune he amassed, first through ships, and later associated with various railroads such as the New York and Harlem (today’s Harlem Line), the Hudson River Rail Road (today’s Hudson Line) and the entity to which he leased both, the New York Central. In the Historical Archives there are several items regarding Vanderbilt, including several obituaries, and a piece about his life that took up several pages of the New York Times the day after he died.

Vanderbilt’s ego was so immense, he figured that many young ladies, so enamored with him, went to purchase railroad bonds because on each bore his own likeness. The archive also has several railroad bonds on display.

Cornelius still looks out on the city of New York every day. His statue is located under the main facade of Grand Central Terminal.

Please note: This post was written based off of the information in the biography Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt written by Edward J. Renehan Jr. Some of the statements made in the book (including the syphilis and prostitutes) have been questioned by other authors for authenticity.

Two weeks ago I mentioned the wreck in the Park Avenue Tunnel in 1902, and how it led to electric service on the rails. Another thing the accident achieved was the replacement of the old Grand Central Depot. The old Depot at the time was serving a lot more trains than it could really handle. Trains often had to wait in order to enter the train shed. The one train involved in the wreck was waiting in the tunnel, when the train behind missed several signals and ended up crashing into it. The new Grand Central Terminal, with its two levels, was able to accommodate a lot more trains than its predecessor.

Construction on the Terminal was finished in 1913. And what does one want to do after spending $180,000,000 on a gorgeous new train station? Show it off to the world, of course! Recently I’ve had a lot of enjoyment looking at old newspapers. Although photography existed at the time, many newspapers still used engraved illustrations. And I really do love looking at these old illustrations of Grand Central.

All of those come from full advertisements shown in newspapers, like the one below:

One thing I thought amusing about the new Grand Central, was that when it opened, it had a private “Women’s Room.” And I don’t mean a bathroom. For twenty-five cents a woman could use a private dressing room, staffed by maids, to change her “costume” for a “social function.” They would even deliver her trunk straight to the dressing room! How grand! And let’s not forget that there were also hair and manicuring parlors, as well as a shoe polishing room. You know what I wonder though, was the line for that “Women’s room” out the door and around the corner like the lines today? Sometimes they really make you want to shoot yourself…

If you’re interested in seeing more old drawings and advertisements of Grand Central’s opening, click here to take a look through the Historical Archives.