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Just back from a quick tour of London's train stations, the authors
discover that the renovators of Grand Central Terminal tried to turn
back the clock and lost their sense of time.
By Marty Kapell and Lyle Rexer
March 2002
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In 1959 a fifteen-foot Westclox Big Ben clock (above, left) was
installed in Grand Central Terminal. Many commuters likely had Henry
Dreyfuss's best-selling 1939 alarm clock (above, right) at home.
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Kodak's massive electronic billboard (1950; above, left) blocked the windows of
the station's east balcony (above, right).
Photos: Top, left & bottom, left, Roger Wood/Corbis; bottom, right, Peter Aaron/Esto
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Most of us never even thought we liked the clock. It was imposing, gauche,
insistent. But no doubt about it, now that it's gone, we miss the clock.
The timepiece at issue is the oversize Westclox "Big Ben" that
was hung prominently as advertising in Grand Central Terminal for decades.
It was wedged between two of the station's massive columns and formed a
portal between the main waiting room, now called Vanderbilt Hall, and the
station's main concourse. Viewed through the eyes of contemporary preservationists,
the clock was worse than crass--it was completely inappropriate.
But it has become abundantly clear that the clock belongs to that class
of things, like the Studebaker Avanti and the Princess phone, whose true
significance is known only once it is gone--whose absence is far more
significant than its presence ever was. "Architecture is dream
and function," Roland Barthes wrote. And what we miss is the residue
of dream, the evidence of yesterday's utopia.
It certainly seems ungrateful at this late date to quibble with a renovation
that has restored the architectural glory to one of New York's most precious
landmarks. The light through the windows, the bridge from Vanderbilt Hall,
and the main concourse with its magnificent vistas--the scale and cleanliness
of it all--are statements of reverence and optimism for the city.
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Another item to appear and disappear from the halls of Grand Central
Terminal was this 1941 photo mural (above, right)--the world's largest
at that time--promoting American values and the sale of defense bonds.
Photo by Bettman Corbis
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The quibble isn't with Grand Central per se but rather with an attitude
toward preservation that leaves no room for the clock or any other anomaly.
That mind-set banishes the possibility that disparate (read: tasteless/inappropriate/accu-mulated)
elements can actually enrich the experience of a public place. In a recent
conversation, Fred Bland--principal of Beyer Blinder Belle, the architectural
firm responsible for Grand Central's resurrection--remarked that all
that was really done to the station was to "clean it up." Although
far more than that was done to improve the building, Grand Central has been
purged of its diversity and rendered pure. It is now uniformly tasteful
and consistent--in fact, a triumph of good taste. It is so consistent that
even its goodness is inconsequential for the lack of any variation.
The quote often attributed to Louis Kahn that architecture must have ordinary
spaces in order to have good ones, is about the language of architecture--and
indeed all language. Meaning arises from a play of differences. Qualities
like grandeur and offensiveness are relational; they need each other to
be perceived. Grand Central certainly has a variety of contrasting spaces,
ranging from its ordinary low-ceilinged passages to its glorious main concourse
and waiting rooms, all deliberately orchestrated in a dramatic procession.
In their restored state, however, the main concourse and its tributary spaces
display a relentless sameness of style that is usually achievable--and desirable--only
in a new building. This sameness reduces the significance of the spaces.
Of course, Grand Central Terminal is not a new building. It was built in
the age of steam and now functions in the digital age. And this is the other
aspect of difference that makes a building meaningful--dissonances of time.
Architecture needs its yesterdays as well as its todays. Grand Central gave
us more: the pathos of todays that had become yesterdays.
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