Exhibition of Modern Art introduced Americans to 1,600 avant-garde European and American works. While the curious professed shock at Marcel Duchamp’s cubist Nude Descending a Staircase, more thoughtful viewers understood that they were witnessing a profound change in modern aesthetics. And, on 42nd Street, the new Grand Central Terminal opened. Travelers immediately recognized Grand Central as more than just a station. It was a soul-uplifting monument, a dramatic entrance to a great city. When you stepped off the train from South Bend or Toledo or Rochester into the marble-walled main concourse and looked up at the constellations on the barrelvaulted ceiling 125 feet above, you knew you had arrived.

The story of Grand Central is a true American tale, featuring selfless heroes and self-serving villains, visionary designers and rapacious developers—plus a triumphal ending. A professor of sociology at Fairfield University, Kurt C. Schlichting writes with deep understanding of Grand Central’s engineering feats and artistic qualities. Though John Belle was the principal architect in Grand Central’s recent restoration, and Maxinne Leighton is an associate partner in Belle’s firm, the two have produced a careful appreciation of the terminal’s architectural history rather than a selfpromoting puff piece. The publication of two books on the same subject within a year often leads to questions of which is better. In this case, we have eloquent companions rather than rivals: Schlichting’s book largely considers the engineering and construction of Grand Central, while Belle and Leighton’s considers the great terminal’s cultural importance, as well as its preservation and restoration.

Grand Central as we know it first existed in the mind of a self-taught engineer from Buffalo, William J. Wilgus. By the turn of the century, the once imposing and elegant Grand Central Depot that Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt had built on the site in 1871 seemed seedy and dangerous. The New York Times condemned it as "a cruel disgrace to the metropolis." But development around the depot prohibited horizontal expansion. Wilgus, chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad, proposed a solution in 1902: Use the same land and build a new terminal vertically.

Under Wilgus’s plan, trains would arrive and depart on two underground levels—79 acres of train yard between Lexington and Madison Avenues stretching north to 56th Street. A loop track would eliminate the switching and shunting needed to get departing trains headed in the right direction. Electricity would replace steam as the motive force for the engines. Most important, the railroad would sell the "air rights" above the buried tracks. The vast, grimy train yard would be transformed into city blocks bustling with people—and the sale of these rights would finance the new terminal. "Thus from the air," Wilgus said, "would be taken wealth."

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of Wilgus’s proposal. Before Wilgus, the tracks serving Grand Central ran along the surface of what is now Park Avenue. The rails divided communities and brought urban blight. (One need only compare the difference in land value between, say, 87th Street and Park Avenue, where the tracks run underground, and 10 blocks north at 97th Street, where they emerge into Harlem.) And the "Terminal City" that Wilgus envisioned would be erected on the air rights ultimately became a wellintegrated mix of hotels, apartments, and office buildings, anticipating by several decades the development at New York’s Rockefeller Center.

In the years that followed his proposal, Wilgus solved the vast three-dimensional puzzle of excavating the train yards and constructing a new underground terminal without disrupting train service. He planned the conversion of the engines from steam to electricity and negotiated with General Electric to build the locomotives. Collaborating with another engineer, Wilgus even designed a safety cover to protect workers from the third rail. When the first of the new locomotives pulled out in September 1906, Wilgus sat at the controls.

Five months later, it all went sour. One of the new electric locomotives flew off the tracks while rounding a bend in the Bronx. Twenty passengers died and scores more were injured. The New York district attorney investigated Wilgus for negligence, and, though he defended himself vigorously, his relationship with the New York Central officers deteriorated. He resigned in September 1907. At that point, William J. Wilgus became a nonperson in the history of Grand Central, forgotten by all but a few.

While Wilgus is responsible for the creation of the underground terminal, Whitney Warren may take credit for most of Grand Central above ground. His story is not always honorable. Initially, Warren’s architectural firm was to build the new terminal in collaboration with a St. Louis firm, Reed and Stem, whose principal contribution to the project is the ramps that enable passengers to move easily through the terminal’s various levels. When a partner in the St. Louis firm died, Warren connived for his own firm to become the sole architects. Though neither book speculates on the motive, we can probably attribute Warren’s machinations to his enormous ego. Recognizing Grand Central’s importance to New York, America, and architectural history, he wanted his name to stand alone as that of its architect. For this breach of professional ethics, the American Institute of Architects expelled Warren from its ranks. Ethical considerations aside, we owe to Warren and his patron William K. Vanderbilt, grandson of the Commodore, the monumental Grand Central we see today. While Reed and Stem had proposed a 12-story office building for the site, Warren substituted a classical Beaux-Arts terminal with only limited commercial space. It was Warren, too, who commissioned the gargantuan statue of Mercury flanked by Minerva and Hercules for the terminal’s south face. In the final analysis, Warren truly was the chief architect of Grand Central.