From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Grand Central terminal celebrate its 100th birthday this month. It is a new new york icon with 750,000 people passing through every day. Tom wolf once wrote, every big city has a railroad station with the grand, to the point of glorious, classical architecture, but the grandest, mauve glorious of all by far was Grand Central station. In the 1970s, it was threatened with destruction. In the 1980s, it fell into disrepair. Now Grand Central is stronger than ever. He were is a look behind the scenes. Grand central is a place with a lot of secrets. One of them is hidden in plain sight its room behind tiffany clock, which overlooks park avenue. Today we go to places the public is never allowed to see, and we meet the characters who make sure the trains run on time. Our first stop takes us from the highest point in Grand Central to the lowest. N42 is the teenest basement in manhattan, and it provides the direct current which powers the trains. We meet with tradition ernie korkin. We are standing in the middle rotary converters. This is what they are used back in the day toeators convert ac to dc. Why is electricity so important to Grand Central . Because thats what powers everything. I help people get to and from work. Get back home to their families. It takes more than just electricity to get people to and from home safely. Here, in another of Grand Centrals secret rooms, we neat jim fagan. I am the assistant chief in the operation control center, and i watch serve, every move its nerveracking. Its your Blood Pressure goes up 10 point going through the door. I can look here right now, and i can look at seven and eight. Why do you do you put yourself through it . The adrenaline. Like jumping out of an airplane sometimes. Grand central has had its share of ups and downs over the years, and one person who has seen them from a unique perspective is alex. He has worked here at the oyster bar since 1976. Not only working here, but you feel like this place doesnt belong one person. It belongs to the people who come through the station, and they are associated with so many memories, so many memories. You feel almost like a guardian of all these memories. Everyone working here at Grand Central, its obviously so much more than just a day job. We asked dan bracker why that might be . Working here at Grand Central for 25 years, handling their press, handling document aryan shoots, i told people its like being a talent agent for the worlds largest, greatest, most magnificent piece of talent, but the talent doesnt do anything. I have to do it for it. I have to make it big. Whereleswhere else on this planet do you see the largest, greatest, most magnificent edifice built for the normal, everyday worker, and this was. Now, as people come through here today, knowing that this place was going to be destroyed, torn down, knowing it was black and uglow, it is an object lesson to everyone walking through here that even though your days may be dark and dreary, maybe you feel on the edge of destruction, that, like this terminal that youre walking through, you, too, can be regenerated, renewed. Its a big charge to them. Every morning as i go to work, every evening as i come home. Rose credit for that goes to oge malocean who did a remarkable job of capturing the people. This is your book, Grand Central, how a train station transformed america. How did it transform america. When i started working on the book i wondered if i could live up to the subtitle. I think it was vind cape towned and validate as i went along. When you go anywhere in the entire world and say, is this place is like Grand Central, Everybody Knows what you mean. Its choreographed chaos. When you think of the famous trains, the way its threaded its way into american culture, from mad men to madagascar, north by northwest. Standard time began at Grand Central. The Civil Rights Movement began there. And from an urban development standpoint air rights and laker preservation really got their start there. Rose you said its almost a universally recognizable place, right . Yeah, its its it takes the word iconography, icon graphic to a new level. In some of the films ive written about, youll just see a tiny piece of this, and all youll see is this serif lettering and this arch, and you know its Grand Central. And i said what other building could you see a little bit of and know where you are. Rose you see this picture and you clearly know what it is. I think it was who said it was almost a religious experience i did say that. That was interesting about that. After we removed the kodak pictures from the terminal and cleaned the windows, and the next day we waited and as people came in they knew something was different and they couldnt figure it out but the light was streaming in the windows from the east. It really was sort of rose an awakening. It really was. It was very exciting. Rose what does it mean to new york . Well, Grand Central is really the transit heart of new york. More people, two or three times as many people, at least, pass through Grand Central every day as passed through the Busiest Airport in the world, and its only 48ation, at most pup know, whereas the atlanta airport, ohare, those are gigantic places rose 40 acres. 48, i think, Something Like that. Its not a whole lot, but the number of people. And to think of the Different Levels the trains, the cars, the subways. All of this intersecting and yet people get through it with relative ease and feel a sense of joy and friendor at the same time. Rose opening them up to new york. I would think going through this crowd would be an awful experience, but i think most people who go through it dont feel that at all. They feel something else. Rose and by 2019 or what year is it . It will be coming in 140 feel below the surface. Rose how did it begin . Well, it began in 1871 as a depot for the new York Central Railroad. The trains went to 42nd street. At one point they went even further south, and then they were banned because of the coalburping locomotives. Horses and carriages took people beyond that, all the way downtown. And then in 1902, there was a fatal accident involving a train coming out of the park avenue tunnel. The engineer could not see. There was smoke, there was soot, snow, fog, and he crashe crashed into another train killing ultimately about two dozen people and the railroad was scared stiff they would be held criminally libel because they knew it was a hazard. The chief engineer came up with the idea of electrifying the railroad, get rid of all the coalburning locomotives. That will allow us to build a twolevel terminal, departures and ariervlings and it will allow us to deck over park avenue creating this incredible gold mine of real estate. People forget from almost lexington to madison avenue to 57th, 59th street were open train yards. Rose the air rights was crucial . The air rights was crucial. In part because they wanted to a build a skyscraper originally, and make it produce revenue for the railroad but then created this property out of thin air on 59th street on both sides of what became park avenue. Rose what was the most difficult part of the transformation from being what it began to what became, you know, its essence. I think, charlie, again, you go back to this engineer, wilgus, one of the Unsung Heroes of thissistic he kept the railroad and the terminal functioning while it was both rebuilt. They decide to tear down the old depot station, build a new terminal, and they had to keep all these trains running at the same time. To be able to do that was a Monumental Task in terms of it engineering. Thats why it took 10 years. Rose give me a sense of the architectural evolution. Well, there were a number of architects involved. And really wilgus, though, you have to give him credit with this leap of imagination. Electfication meant they could take down the enormous train shed and suddenly rethink the entire composition. They brought in a groom of architects, first reid and stem, and then warren retmore. And they created what i think remains to this day, 100 years later, the most advanced threedimensional rethinking of what a city could be, and cap it with this extraordinary classical building the terminal itself and wetmores idea, which was a civil of simple powerful idea, in roman cities there had been agreement triumphal arches, with the three arches, and in the american city, the gateway was not at the edge of the city, as in rome, but in the center of the city, and it was now a railroad station. He picked up the idea of the Triple Arches of the roman gate and made that the architectural motif of the terminal. One of the things i felt so striking when it was originally built inine 71, the New York Times said this place was neither grand nor central. Why did they build the terminal so far out of town. The vanderbilts in effect brought midtown to their doorstep, changed the whole center of gravity of manhattan. Rose you call it the great town square. I do. Part of the idea you asked about the air rights this would be more than just a station. It would be more than a place where people were getting on and off the train. It was be an urban center, with hotels, apartment buildings, and shops called a city within a city, which it was, pouring through those passages and into the finally the main concourse, which became kind of a well, the great urban well, and the new york town square. Not outdoors, indoors, this fantastic crossing place and gathering place. Rose it almost became a Terminal City. Thats what he envisioned, a Terminal City going up park avenue flock flocked boy an opera house and other public buildings and some versiones of that came to be. Rose does the history of Grand Central station parallel in terms of its ups and downs the history of railroads in america . Can you well, ill take a quick stab at it. Clearly, the United States at the turn of the century when Grand Central was more or less being transformed, this was at that moment a leading railroad country in the world. Even though it was a british invention in the 1820s, its america that takes it and runs with it. Then our railroads declined through the 20th search row. Not so much Grand Central until world war ii. But Grand Central is going to go into its own kind of relative decline after the big war. And it continues as american passenger Railroad Traffic declines, but unlike the rest of the United States, whats amazing about Grand Central and metronorth is that not only is the decline stopped, but now its in the 21st century, its up. Rose why is it that people want to tear down penn station, and Grand Central station . Money. Rose money. They wanted to make money. The railroad was bankrupt. And they wanted to put Office Towers over it that would produce revenue. And the idea of preserving a landmark did not resonate anywhere as much as it does today. The good news is it did not die in vain. Well, a bit of it is the price of its own success. You have this extraordinary railroad which is pouring people in from the suburbs and all over. Of course, it makes that land the most valuable land in the world. People can just get on an escalator and go to the building. And indeed the building of the cruel irony of the pan am building. We forget that it was the Panamerican Airlines company stomping down in 1962, 63, on Grand Central, but for the very good economic reason, the old baggage room, which had been there of course not an economical use of the space and here you could build a build that would sit right on top of the railroad, so incredibly valuable, and true to a lesser degree at penn station. Rose what role did Jackie Kennedy play . She saved it, i think. One could make that argument. There was a landmarks law on the books but one of the things i i discovered doing this book which i didnt know, when the judge ruled against the city in the landmarks preservation suit, the city was probably not going to appeal the decision. It was in the middle of the fiscal crisis. The city was worried it would be meld liable have to pay tens of medicine of dollars in damages. It wasnt until jackie onassis, ed koch, philip johnston, galvanized a movement saying we cant afford to lose this thing anymore that the momentum began that carried the case all the way up to the Supreme Court and established landmarks preservation. A consortium of organizations got together, including the Municipal Art Society, and they said we have to make our stand here. The feeling was at the time, actually, Grand Central was a Good Building to make your stand on. If this idea of landmarks if preservation was going to go to the Supreme Court, better it be Grand Central than some tiny little place somewhere. So they justed to make this the big push. Rose so, peter, you were chairman of metronorth . I was president of metronorth froms 8391, and i was carol of the m. T. A. , from 91 to 95. I was graduate brawt in to give some advice to the m. T. A. At that time, and conrail was operating the passenger service, and they were permitted by congress to get out of operating commuter service. So the question was do you contract it out to amtrak or create your own railroad . We created our own railroad, which was metronorth and we fortunately had some Capital Investment money that we began to put into the infrastructure cars, right of way, signals, and that sort of stuff. Hoping it was a question of when, not if, we would get to Grand Central because obviously the terminal was in terrible shape. Not just what you saw but what you couldnt see behind the rose so what did you do . Well, the first thing we did was spend 5 million to fix the roof because we wanted to make sure if were going to spend any money inside woe didnt want it lacked on. And the second thing we did was we put out a contract for an architectural firm, byer blindenbell, and woe they ended up gilletteing the contract. And they were charged with putting together a master plan, and they were told that the first and foremost, the purpose has to be to maintain it and restore it as a Great Railroad station. Secondly, to restore the architectural integrity of the terminal. And the third thing was to james point before make it or remake it to into a destination in and of itself. Rose right, exactly. Through commercial development and retail and that sort of stuff. We restored the vanderbilt hall, restored the chandeliers. Central arteried to clean the ceiling, and the whole purpose, charlie my purpose, at least was trying to demonstrate our credibility in getting it done and build constituencies because none of us stay around these things forever, to make sure that the momentum could not be reversed. And we were successful in doing that by putting some money into it and building to the constituencies. The real estate people around the terminal were wonderful. I think one of the interesting question is why Grand Central had a much more positive impact on its neighborhood than pennsylvania station had on its. Not that pennsylvaniaostation was a bad neighborhood. But Grand Central, the neighborhood around it became not just a leading Business District of new york, replacing lower mont, certainly, boy the depression, and probably before that, the leading Business District in the world. Rose pulled butt could that have happened to penn station with skilled hands and with some resources . You had penn stakes. You had the post office building, and you had the possibility in principle, but in in fact as ive argued, want architecture of pennsylvania station which you cant say a bad word about anymore there were some real problems with it. It stood alone its station it was was brilliantly like Grand Central, the traction brilliantly conceived and directed. But the station of a standalone object, very different in conception from Grand Central which was understood from the beginning, and almost uniquely as a constellation of intersected buildings, three leveles, really, astonishing. The cars going above, pedestrian traffic at street level and these underground concourses. And it was kind of a tightly knit kind of spiderlike construction woven into the fabric. Woven into the fabric rose who are the heroes of the restitration project . I would say peter stangl, john bell, and jackie onassis. The Municipal Art Society played a major role. Rose a friend of mine said the preservation was a sex change. He said, grand strstles built 83 years ago as a temple to the manly cult of work, hustle, bustle, buttondown colathe highpowered rhythm of the 95. Iis that fair . The one thing Grand Central was not was a kind of utilitarian place that yo