Grand Central vs. Penn Station
As Grand Central Terminal celebrates its 100th birthday this year, its magnificence is more meaningful when measured against its cross-town competitor, Penn Station.
As someone who has at one time commuted daily for a span of two years in and out of each station, I’m in a good position to compare the two. The New York Times said it well from the architectural side in February 2012. “To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation.”
I never appreciated Grand Central until a two-year purgatory in Penn Station reminded me that you don’t miss your water until your well runs dry. New York is a different city viewed through the grandeur of Grand Central.
The two stations carry commuters to the contrasts of the New York metro area. From Grand Central, Metro North serves Connecticut, Westchester County, and the Hudson Valley; from Penn Station, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road serve their respective suburbs.
I grew up in Mount Kisco, a stop on the Harlem Line 36.5 miles north from Grand Central according to the old sign affixed to the ticket office across from the platform. To this day when people ask where I am from I tell them Mount Kisco, a little town about 35 miles north of the City. These days I live in Brooklyn; I take the train back to Mount Kisco once a month or so to visit my country home (otherwise known as my parent’s place).
Grand Central, as a figure of speech, indicates a place of great comings and goings (at least to this New Yorker) like the hallways of a high school at the bell, a hospital emergency room, or a busy office reception area.
Penn
Station doesn’t stand for much of anything, so I propose a coinage. For stranded travelers, the captives at an airport subjected to never-ending flight delays, that place is like Penn Station.
Grand
Central is one of the grandest public buildings in the United States; Penn
Station is one step above a subway station.
Grand
Central, The Oyster Bar; Penn Station, TGI Fridays.
The two
stations are also defined by the company they keep. Grand Central sits in the
heart of Midtown, white shoe law firms and posh private clubs speckle the
surrounding blocks. Have a drink at the
Yale Club or hop a train to Yale.
Penn
Station’s home in the mid-thirties is a no-man’s land of the Lincoln Tunnel,
the Port Authority Bus Station, and a massive mail sorting facility.
At Grand
Central trains are ready for boarding precisely 20 minutes before
departure. At Penn Station, the lack of
track space forces passengers to stand around the departure board in the main
concourse waiting for a track to be announced, often three minutes before the
train is scheduled to leave. A mad dash
ensues.
Nothing
defines life in the rat race like the presence of alternatives offering a way
out. The departure board at Penn Station
is a catalog of escape routes courtesy of Amtrak with enchanting names like the
Lakeshore Limited to Chicago (Amtrak’s gateway to the west), the Crescent to
New Orleans, and the Palmetto to Miami. You, however, are going to West Babylon…just as soon as your track is
announced.
At Grand
Central, everyone is united in the same purpose, commuting in and out of the
suburbs.
Penn
Station transports passengers through the industrial expanses of the Northeast,
barren swampland segues to factories and refineries. Halfway houses on a smoke break out back;
billboards remind the reader of the penalty for buying a gun for those who
can’t. The train stops at newfangled
neighborhoods like Metropark that don’t designate an actual city, but a place
to park your car between a budding of office buildings that would make a good
location for a satellite office of Dundler Mifflin.
In
comparison, Metro North on the Harlem Line is like a stroll through the woods. The Hudson Line hugs the river heading north.
Metro
north trains operate with Swiss efficiency. They are rarely late. NJ Transit and
LIRR are on island time. Of the 20 lines
in the Metropolitan Transit Authority system, the route I took, the Northeast
corridor ranked dead last in a New York Times survey of on-time performance. My
train to New Brunswick was once delayed every day for a month, so I adjusted my
time back ten minutes. Then one day it
came on time and I missed it.
In the
intervening 100 years since Grand Central’s inception, design theories on the
most efficient patterns of people movement have come and gone, but one simple
solution endures. Make the space big
enough.
An
example. The ramps leading to the train
platforms at Grand Central are wide enough for an elephant to waddle down,
sideways. Thousands of people can use
the ramp at once, the lack of stairs ensures a fluid pace.
At Penn
Station you descend to the tracks on narrow stairwells or escalators. On a bad day an entire train uses one exit, funneling
passengers when they’re supposed to be dispersed.
Often
both an incoming and outgoing train will share the same platform and stairwell.
Commuting through this chaos makes you want to take that Palmetto to Miami.
I once
tried to remedy the situation and ended up in court.
Rush
hour. The train pulled into Penn and a charge
of people got off. Our herd was forced
to walk to the other end of the platform to shuffle up a single stairwell. Meanwhile, an escalator spit stairs at our
feet, headed down in defiance when we wanted to go up.
The
escalators have emergency stop buttons at waist level. I mashed the little red button to kill it,
and lead the charge out of the dungeon to the daylight.
This is
standard operating procedure at Penn Station; it happens every day. This time though, an Amtrak employee
stationed at the top screeched after me like I had just snatched her
purse. A cop stopped me and issued me a ticket for
disorderly conduct with a court appearance in two months.
My court
date was a cold January morning. I
waited in line outside the court building in Midtown with a group of guys who
were mostly cabdrivers. Upon entering, I
took my seat in the courtroom to await my fate. My plan was to explain to the judge that while I received a ticket for
disorderly conduct, I was actually making Penn Station more orderly. A lawyer friend wisely advised me against
this tactic.
A court
appointed lawyer spoke with me for a few minutes before I approached the
judge. He asked me what happened. After I explained the situation, he wanted to
know if I was drunk at the time. Clearly
he was not a Penn Station commuter.
I stood
in front of the judge for less than 30 seconds; she never looked up at me. I received a stay-out-of-trouble-for-six-months
dismissal, and left. I didn’t even pay a
fine.
After
that experience I never pressed the emergency stop switch again. I let other people do it for me (and let them
go first).
Most landmark
buildings are best admired as works of architecture rather than as experiences. The New York Public Library, two blocks down
42nd Street from Grand Central is a good example. I remember working in the Great Hall seated
at a table beside a dictionary opened on a pedestal. I watched as a European tourist, hands
clasped behind his back, stood over the dictionary and admired its definitions
for a few minutes like it was an exhibit of early Etruscan artifacts.
100
years on, Grand Central is an experience in itself, people watching, eating,
shopping, and the light show of stars twinkling on the ceiling high above.
Grand
Central Market stocks all the specialties, from fresh caviar to chocolate
covered Oreos. Hudson News has entire
sections devoted to Italian, Spanish, French, and German magazines. (It carries Philadelphia Magazine, Boston
Magazine, and the Washingtonian.
Although Penn Station trains depart daily for these cities, you can’t
buy their namesake magazines.)
The
Apple Store occupies the space at the top of one staircase overlooking the main
hall; Cipriani Dolce with $39.95 entrees, the other. In a display of contemporary capitalism the
world's most profitable company hawks planned obsolescence in aluminum
canisters up the stairs, while at ground level arch rival Samsung heckles the
competition with movie poster-sized advertisements strategically situated
throughout the main hall.
The
information booth at the center of everything is Grand Central’s most famous
landmark. Though it’s where everybody
meets, I think it’s overrated as an option. The information booth is the size of an old growth redwood, if hollowed
out you could drive a car through it. Your friend could be waiting for you on one curve, you on another, and
never the twain shall meet.
The best
place to meet in my opinion is the Ticketed Waiting Area. It’s the size of a storefront church, pew-like
seats line the walls, and two oak benches sit back to back in the middle of the
room. It was originally the women’s
waiting room and over the last few years has reclaimed this distinction in
spirit; the renovated bathrooms now serve women only.
The information booth on this day is manned by a guy with dreadlocks who feeds directions to tourists to Times Square in a voice his microphone renders like a robot with emphysema. I have a 10-pass that I buy just before the recent fare increase. I ask information if I will need to pay the difference onboard. It’s a lightweight question. I'm good to go.
I hear
two friends successfully making the meet. They greet each other. “How are
you big boy?” “What did you do to your lip?”
Penn
Station doesn't have people like Ben Rey. I have seen him in print a few times over the
years, and have encountered him at Grand Central in as many instances. Sure
enough, he is hanging by the information booth on my last visit. I want a
picture of the 100-year sign; he is standing right below it, so I get both. Believe-it-or-not, he lives in Greenwich.
I’m not the only one with a camera. A tourist is taking a picture of her friend whose arms are outstretched in a mid-flight jumping jack pose; the starscape ceiling provides the backdrop. These two from Tokyo are here to take pictures, not trains. They have come to Grand Central as a destination in itself, not as a portal to another place.
I’m not the only one with a camera. A tourist is taking a picture of her friend whose arms are outstretched in a mid-flight jumping jack pose; the starscape ceiling provides the backdrop. These two from Tokyo are here to take pictures, not trains. They have come to Grand Central as a destination in itself, not as a portal to another place.
Grand
Central is an experience. No ticket
needed. At Penn Station, you wouldn’t
think of visiting without one.
Comments
You got the gift, dude...
Write early, write often.
It's almost like these places are real.
:)