On June 16th afternoon, we visited Grand Central Terminal again. This time, with a professional architecture tour guide, we explore the neighborhood. At the end of the tour, we were standing on 45th street between Park avenue and Vanderbilt avenue. We were surrounded by two buildings: Helmsley Building and MetLife building.
What I found interesting was the expansion joints in the middle of streets as shown in the picture below.

Those joints are usually used for the structure of a bridge. Yes we were technically standing on a huge bridge. The guide explained that these were the bridges above the park avenue train tunnels, which used to be open to the grand as shown in the picture below.

Photo@ Douglas Feiden, Rising Above the Rails at Hudson Yards, The Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323368704578592141407884714

       Visiting the NYC Transit Museum and the Archives was a great experience and definitely one I found Interesting. Firstly, it was amazing looking through old photographs of the city back in the early 1900’s, particularly Bryant Park and Times Square. In the Bryant Park photos, it was interesting to see the place wide and open as oppose to it being surrounded by buildings today. On the top right corner of one photo, you could see advertisements for the Barnum and Bailey circus and even more incredible what looked like a Wrigley’s spearmint gum ad, both of which are still around to this day. With Times Square, you could still see how it was a place that got crowded even back then. Also, The bottom of that one building where the New Years ball drops could still be seen. Lastly, out of the many more things we saw in those photos, the one thing that stood out in all of them was the clothing people wore.

       Inside the Transit Museum, I enjoyed seeing how the subways and tunnels were made. The various photos and displays of the tools used painted a good picture of what it must have been like back then. Specifically, they had this one mock up of a wheelbarrow with actual rocks in it that weighed about half of what workers back then typically moved; The purpose of it was to try to lift it so you could see how much hard work was put in back then. Looking at the different variations of turnstiles over the years was cool too. Something new I learned was that back when they used tokens to pay for the subway, they had something called ‘slugs’ which was a term used to describe counterfeit tokens. By far, the thing that caught my attention the most was looking at and actually stepping into the old trains found on the lower level of the museum. From the outside, not much but the paint job and style of display changed over the years. The more interesting stuff was found inside. Things like old advertisements, signs, and fans were interesting to look at; the seats were what made the display amazing. What was funny about them was how they were more comfortable back then, with the cushioned seats and all, and how they slowly came to be the uncomfortable ones we have now.

New York Central System. (1970). Grand Central Terminal [Brochure]. New York, NY: Author.                   This pamphlet/brochure contains information about Grand Central Terminal such as a                 brief overview of its history, current events located there, and more. Meant for those                     visiting New York, specifically the Terminal, it shows old photographs of Grand Central                 dating back to circa 1970 along with short captions detailing the place’s significance.

The Gateway to a Continent. (1940). New York, NY: New York City Architects.                                                 A book containing information about various hotels in NYC during the 1940’s. Composed             of brief description of each hotel including details such as, the location, nearby structures             along with photographs and draws of them. 

The Bowery Boys’ podcast was essentially everything we have been reading and learning about while on the walking tours. Since everyone heard the same podcasts, to simply summarize would be ultra- repetitive, and a response is more fitting for this podcast. For some reason, I was expecting to hear something a little deeper or something I had not already learned about Grand Central. Besides learning Vanderbilt was from Staten Island and received $6 million from the City of New York to build the underground tunnels, I really didn’t get much from the podcast. I enjoy history, and I really tried to enjoy it but this podcast just could not keep my interest. Honestly, podcasts that simply regurgitate facts bore me to death, and had they been more animated and lively, I probably would have been more receptive to the podcast.

The Bowery Boys are great hosts who produce informative information about New York City sites in a casual, engaging way. Their podcast on Grand Central Terminal relayed a lot of information already taught in class and during our tours such as the transitioning from a depot to a station to a terminal and the 1903 contest and the nepotism that occurred with Reed and Stem and Warren and Wetmore. I liked that they stated that Grand Central Terminal really created the shape of Manhattan and that it aided in the introduction of electricity in the city, which it did. They also placed emphasis on William Wilgus, who is an astounding and prominent chief engineer and made great changes to make the terminal what it is now–a bustling commuter center.

This is a very interesting site made easy for whoever wants to conduct thorough research and is looking for primary sources. The first thing provided is organized citation information that can be cumbersome for those who either do not know how to do a citation or are just not willing to do the work to gather the info needed in order to do it properly. The collection overview is a summary of all its contents and the order in which they are organized making it easy for the researcher to find what they are looking for. Some of the materials are organized in chronological order and/or files labeled under projects names. It also provides keywords that may be used when trying to find this specific information. It is shock full of information categorized as primary sources since it contains correspondence from significant events, minutes of meetings conducted, reports, charts, statistics, etc., the list goes on and on proving itself to be a reliable resource with a wealth of information for the researcher.

I kind of enjoyed hearing this podcast. Conducted as a talk news show keeps the listener interested. Although it is informative, most of the information was not new to me since reading Wikipedia and the official tours we were given provided most of the information heard on the podcast. However, the podcast had enlightened me with information that is new for me such as New York state giving Cornelius Vanderbilt and, his partner at the time, Burt Fulton a legalized monopoly to run ferry operations. Although the podcast was not done chronologically it is informative. I loved the fact that the podcast mentions Cornelius Vanderbilt’s current decedents CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and Gloria Vanderbilt who was known for her designer jeans that was popular during the late 1970s and early 1980s.  The Bowery Boys also mentioned a quote made by William Wilgus, “taking wealth from the air” where real estate derived the concept “air rights.”

The William J. Wilgus Papers (1895-1947) finding aid organizes its content using taxonomy. The key terms attached to this document allows for researchers to connect and understand the relation between relevant persons, entities, subject topics, and physical evidence/artifacts. The actual content, itself, is organized in a very long, detailed outline, using main topics, subtopics, and a combination of capital Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, and, capital and lowercase letters. As the outline progresses, general information about his professional career evolves into his personal essays of “military reorganization, transportation, and war preparedness” (William J. Wilgus Papers, 1895-1947, p.4).  If a researcher decided  to write a research paper about Wilgus or Grand Central Terminal, he/she could easily use this finding aid to locate additional sources not located in the “Stacks” or “References” sections in a library, or, could use the key terms or subjects within the finding aid to conduct academic database searches.

The New York Times published an article on September 12, 1909 entitled ‘THE NEW TERMINAL OF THE “GRAND CENTRAL”’ that gives complete details of reconstruction of Grand Central all while not interrupting train services and the challenges it faced while doing so. It gives details of future plans in building “a city above a city,” restoring streets putting into effect air rights and an estimated value of property in the size “of a single railroad car”. Also included in the article are details of the four different levels within Grand Central and their purposes.
The themes discussed in class are as follows:
• Transportation / Culture of Travel
• Architectural Transition
• Engineering Changes / Tech Development
• Building Designs
• Culture
• Aesthetics Changes
I listed all of them because they all play a part in this particular article. Transportation / culture of travel is mentioned in the article pointing out the amount of people traveling and how they rely on Grand Central for this accomplishment both in time and destination. The architectural transition is described in details and gives images of its final outcome to the date (it is not as what it looks like today). Engineering and tech development are compared to a game of chess and as stated in the article, not a game of opposition but of collaboration. Culture also played an important role in this article because the privileged were used to traveling in high class depending on the Pullman’s luxury cars. The building designs are shown in drawn images. The aesthetic changes are described in words and points out the importance of the artistic designs.

Unknown. (1909, September 12). The New Terminal of the “Grand Central”. New York Times, p. SM9. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/96947331?accountid=28313

The visit to the Transit Museum and its archives has been an enlightening one. Curious questions thought throughout the years were answered in visiting this site such as how were tunnels built under the river for trains to go through? The answer is found in the following image… I use this image freely because according to the person in archives, we are allowed to use images taken from the Transit Museum since most images were taken before 1923 are considered to be public domain.

Since I arrived about 2 1/2 hours before my scheduled time for the archives, I took my time in looking at photos and reading tags. The story of building tunnels for the “future” electric trains involved many elements that affected history including those of labor laws and the creation of unions.

This is one post out of two since certain information that has not yet been obtained is required. It is to be continued…

A finding aid is essentially that it is a guide for finding something. When doing archival research that is searching for a primary source in an archive it can become overwhelming especially if the archival site contains a huge collection.  In this example the finding aid is set up by Creator,Call number, Physical description, repository and access to material. The collection is described as 115 linear feet (112 boxes),  and the  collection consists of records that document Wilgus’ professional activities as a civil engineer. New York Central and Hudson River Railroad papers, 1895-1931, include correspondence; research notes, articles and pictures, engineering reports, in this case It is also important to note that some material are restricted while others require permission for use.

William Wilgus was a true pioneer. He was the Nostradamus of engineering. He worked on may engineering project that helped shape the New York transportation system. His resume consisted of Buffalo Union Station, the Weehawken (N.J.) Terminal and the modern Grand Central Station.  Through his life he received many awards for his engineering work  and war service. After his retirement he moved to New Hampshire where he died in 1949.