Manhattan's Little Secrets by John Tauranac

Author:John Tauranac
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493030484
Publisher: Globe Pequot Press

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The eagle on Grand Central Terminal’s elevated circumferential plaza, southeast corner, Vanderbilt Avenue and 42nd Street

Today’s Grand Central, which was built in 1913, is the third on this site, and this cast-iron eagle, weighing in at 1.5 tons and with a 14-foot wingspan, had originally adorned the second Grand Central. That building was called “Grand Central Station,” in contradistinction with the first Grand Central, a “Depot,” and with today’s “Terminal,” so called because all trains that enter the building terminate there. When the second Grand Central was torn down in 1910 to make way for today’s terminal, this eagle, along with its confreres, went missing, scattered to the anonymous winds.

Grand Central Depot was a three-story, mansard-topped Second Empire building, and it ranked among the most prominent buildings in the city when it was built in 1871. By the 1890s, its facilities could not accommodate the ever-expanding clerical staff, and the decision was to add three stories to it.

The architect Bradford Gilbert was asked to design the addition and to give the facade a more “modern” look. Elements of the old were stripped away, including the central Mansard roof. Stucco was applied over the old brick, and the overall style was changed to a more classical design with English baroque flourishes. Four small, Christopher Wren–like clock towers, or “tourelles,” were added to the roofline, and at the base of those towers were the eagles.

Nobody seems quite sure how many eagles there had actually been. If there had been four at the base of each of the four tourelles, simple math tells you sixteen, but because of “facadism” there had probably been eleven. Few people could see anything from the street but the eagles along the facade, so you get three eagles on the base of each of the two towers on the corners of the 42nd Street facade, two on the base of the central tower on Vanderbilt Avenue, and another three overlooking 45th Street.

The sculptor of the eagles is unknown, ditto the foundry, and not even Margot Gayle, the authority on everything cast iron, had discovered anything. The basic facts are a mystery.

Few people seemed to have bothered with the disposition of the eagles until 1966, when David McLane, a photographer for the Daily News, stumbled on one of the eagles at the Metro-North railroad station in North Tarrytown. His curiosity was piqued, and he and other intrepid eagle seekers went on a search for more.

Their first stop might have been “Eagle’s Nest,” an estate on the north shore of Long Island, in Centerport. Eagle’s Nest started being built in 1910, the very year that the station was being pulled down, and Eagle’s Nest just happened to have been owned by William K. Vanderbilt II, a vice president of the New York Central Railroad. The eagles were essentially his for the taking, and Vanderbilt no doubt simply appropriated them without a word. Flanking the driveway to Eagle’s Nest is a pair of the estate’s namesakes.

The balance of the flock started turning up in some pretty unlikely places.

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