Over the weekend, I found myself in Grand Central Terminal.
I had to run some errands in Grand Central Market, and couldn't resist visiting the main concourse!
I mean, check out that ceiling! Here's what the Grand Central Terminal
website had to say about it:
The most notable feature of the Main Concourse is the great astronomical mural, from a design by the French painter Paul Helleu, painted in gold leaf on cerulean blue oil. Arching over the 80,000 square-foot Main Concourse, this extraordinary painting portrays the Mediterranean sky with October-to-March zodiac and 2,500 stars. The 60 largest stars mark the constellations and are illuminated with fiber optics, but used to be lit with 40 watt light bulbs that workers changed regularly by climbing above the ceiling and pulling the light bulbs out from above. Soon after the Terminal opened, it was noted that the section of the zodiac depicted by the mural was backwards. For several decades lively controversy raged over why this was so. Some of the explanations offered were that it just looked better, or it didn’t fit into the ceiling any other way. The actual reason is that Paul Helleu took his inspiration from a medieval manuscript, published in an era when painters and cartographers depicted the heavens as they would have been seen from outside the celestial sphere.
From the giant mural to smaller details, like the ticket booths...
Everything is just so ornate and beautiful!
But do you know what really amazes me? The number of people that are here. It doesn't matter what time or what day it is, there's always a crowd leaving or arriving!
Most of the people are usually clumped in this general area, looking for all sorts of information.
You know what? I think this is one of the most beautiful places in NYC!
Thanks for stopping by- I hope you had a wonderful weekend!
