Leaders and high ranking individuals have always exerted their power by influencing the aesthetics around us. Grand Central is famous for its acorn and oak leaf motif, incorporated to please the Vanderbilts who used that symbolism as their family crest. The clock tower built at Waterbury, Connecticut’s Union Station is to this day one of the most iconic buildings in the city, but was only added to the station a year after construction had begun at the behest of the railroad’s president. In New York we have also seen an individual lending his personal touch to some of the state’s...