the role of the parent, that if the parents are not parents, they're doing drugs and selling drugs and selling guns in the house and loads of cash with a cane dust on them, the mothers are doing drugs, they are noty g emotionally present, you end up ot with a messed up kid who may ore may not go out and hurt otheevrd people. even though when the parents really do care and they make tho wrong decisions or they don't keep theirpes eyes open it's tough but it seems that the parent does play an important role in these cases. >> thank you all very much and thank you all for joining

>> we would like to hear from yo tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> and now i'll booktv, sam roberts presents a history of the new york city train station, grand central terminal. the terminal opened on february 2, 1913, and currently accommodates 750,000 people daily. this is about an hour. >> thank you, cindy. thanks to all of you for coming. i was at ed koch's memorial service a couple weeks ago. though clinton walked in carrying papers like this and he said, i just want to assure you all this is not the eulogy. these are just the letters that ed koch sent me while i was president. while i'm happy to say this is not the eulogy either, because we still have grand central terminal, we came very close not to having it but fortunately it was saved and we will talk about

that. i'm going to talk all the while and then be happy to try to answer any questions that you might have. when i began this book and met with my colleagues at grand central publishing we came up with the title track 11 -- "grand central: how a train station transformed america" and then i said david? that's a pretty ambitious agenda to have to live up to? and i realized it easily did that. dthe more researched the book te more i realized that this was a transformative place. and just prepping for a minute. if you go anywhere in the world and say this places like grand central station, everybody knows what you're talking about. it's a metaphor for frenzy, chaos, dizziness and muscle, people recognize it all over. grandson has been the site of ransom demands, mail train

robbers, triumphant homecoming, hopeful sendoffs, the target of nazi saboteurs, terrorist bombs. its passengers have included presidents, living and dead, kids left for summer camp from their, and soldiers went to war. everyone has a favorite grand central moment. been cheaper whose father chronicled the suburban commuter said that it as inviting as a rich person's house with the doors thrown wide open. the concourse is larger than the notre dame cathedral and yet it is strangely inviting from hero. even as a child on my dismal way to brooks brothers to be fitted for a flannel suit that would change the skin of my thighs, i did not feel diminished. brian discovered you go, the book and film character at grand central. and my own best member of grand

central was when i was a kid growing up in brooklyn. my father would take me to lots of places around the city. and sometimes in the 1950s i was standing on one of the platforms in the train terminal looking up at this gleaming locomotive, new york central number 371. i still remember a. and the engineer leaned out of his cab and said, hey, do you want to come up and drive this thing? what could be better than this? so he helped me up, put me on his lap, put my hand on the throttle and the engine chugged forward two or three feet. to me it seemed like a mile. i was driving a locomotive in grand central terminal. new yorkers kind of take things like that for granted, certainly take grand central for granted and i assumed when i started working on this book i knew everything there was to know about it. but again i learned so much, and they keep learning. and every time i get a book talk like this, someone comes up to

me at the end or in the question period, says, did you know that so-and-so? so it is a learning process that goes on and on. and like my day job at the times i'm sort of getting paid for getting a postgraduate education. technically grand central is a terminal. but the were terminal conscious of endings and grand central is really a place of beginnings. not the least of which, of course, is its own. it's a terminal because trains terminate there. railroad people like to recall the apocryphal rube who asked the conductor where the is new york central train stopped at new york city, to which the conductor replied, there would be an awful crash if it didn't last night you couldn't tell that story -- [laughter] you couldn't tell that story about central station for all its splendor. one person described as reducing you to a two-minute stop on the

line from long island city to new jersey. terminal also suggests a destination, and, in fact, it has been the gateway to new york since 1913, and the cities gateway to the continent. to those of us -- jones wrote this com go to those of us who e from places where grand central station was a radio program, new york was no mere city. it was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious annexes of love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. now, i'm not sure how many of you remember, i don't, but every saturday morning on cbs radio and announced it would in tone as a bullet seeks its target, shining rails in every part of our great country are aimed at grand central station. part of the nation's greatest

city. drawn by the magnetic force, day and night, freight trains rush towards the hudson river, sweep down its eastern bank for 140 miles, dies at what they were into the two and a half mile tunnel which burroughs beneath the clear and swank of park avenue, and then grand central station. crossroads of a million private lives, gigantic stage on which are played 1000 from his daily. just imagine listening to it on the radio in some other part of the country and the image that that would conjure up in your mind. since then the terminal has threaded itself into popular culture even more. madman's roger sterling forced himself on oysters and martinis there.

cary grant called his mother from a phone booth before fleeing down on the 20th century limited north by northwest. animals brought in the main concourse in madagascar. it's interesting, we again take it for granted that from a commercial standpoint grand central was one of america's first multi-use buildings. it incorporated shops, restaurants, offices. in short, all the diversity of the city within the confines of one building. i have to admit i'm not sure i totally believe this story, but holiday magazine has called the exploits of a newly married couple whose train to niagara falls was canceled, so they honeymooned at grand central. they got a room at the biltmore, link to the turbine underground quarter. they died, dance, took advantage

of the terminals shops and exhibition halls, and did all this without ever seeing a train. even more amazingly, they returned a year later to celebrate their wedding anniversary. grand central was home to the first cbs television studio. edward r. murrow would broadcast what's my line came from there. but goldberg's came from there. unfortunately sometime later in the 1950s when television sets got better, people realized that when the screen was shaking, it wasn't their set. it was a vibrations from the trains moving in and out of the terminal. so the cbs studio had to move over to west 57th street, where it is still today. they were great trains like the 20th century limited. we all know about red carpet treatment. the term which goes back to ancient times was popularized on the 20th century limited. every night when the train left for chicago, porters would roll

out a red carpet, the full length of the platform, and passengers would go down the carpet on the way to the tree but it was like traveling on the queen mary or the queen elizabeth but just going across country. an amazing thing and hard to imagine today. standard time was born at grand central terminal. there were something like 100 different time zones in the united states, until charles dowd who was a boarding school principal and later became skidmore college, came up with an idea of establishing four time zones. and grand central was the first place where that was begun. one of the things i discovered in the course of my research is that some years later charles dowd was killed in an accident upstate. he was run over by a train, of all things. and, unfortunately, history does not tell us whether the train was on time.

grand central was a consummate civic monument. it was the result of a merger of two architectural firms. one was reagan's stem, which to me sound like a landscape firm. read and stem. but alan stem was the brother-in-law of william weld is it was the chief engineer of the railroad. so they hired them to build grand central. but then warren came on scene, another architect from warren and what more. whitney warns connection with railroad from those of alan stands, whitney warren was vanderbilts cousin. it's not who you know, it's not what you know message, it's who you know. although each of the architectural firms brought a lot to the equation and i think you can make an argument that the sum of what they did is greater than its parts. now what interesting is when the original grand central was built

in 1871, "the new york times" said this place is neither grand nor central. why would they build a station all the way up on 42nd street in the middle of nowhere? this was a time when the city was mostly below canal street, so what was the station going all the way uptown? what's so fascinating is when you look at the history of grand central, the vanderbilts delivered midtown manhattan to their doorstep. they shifted the entire center of gravity of manhattan midtown. and that was all a result of grand central. they developed something else that grand central which again we can take for granted, ramps. rants instead of statistics of people, especially long distance train travelers with baggage would not have to schlep their baggage up and down stairs. there were ramps. a lot of people of no idea what ramps were.

one magazine harkens back to julius caesar and said these were the earthworks that the agent romans bill when they were invading a world city, which they used to get up to the ramparts, hence, ramps. the notion of air rights which has been monetized and is worth billions of dollars coming into play again now as the mayor wants to rezone part of the corridors north of grand central. air rights were invented for all intents and purposes at grand central. william is the original version for this terminal was to deck over par cabinet, and by doing that he created and monetize all of this real estate. one thing we forget is that the train tracks created this giant gash in the middle of manhattan. they ran almost from lexington avenue and madison avenue and although up to 59th street and

then open submerged train yard in the middle of manhattan. they decide to deck the over and i will tell you in a minute why, and that you changed the entire face of manhattan. landmarks preservation will go into that later, too, but as paul goldberger said, grand central became the poster building for every landmark in the united states. the whole notion of landmark preservation as a legal principle was enshrined at grand central terminal. one of the things i learned was that the terminal sort of began by accident, i an accident effect. in 1900 to. a train coming from new rochelle coming out of that park avenue tunnel in the fog, snow, the rain, the dark, the senate and centers from trains couldn't see a light in front of it. a control like. and crashed into another train

killing ultimate about two dozen people. "the new york times" wrote, as slowly the harvest of death week in the hole underneath the new york street is being garnered in the homes of new rochelle, the townsman of the dead and maimed are beginning to ask each other not how this thing occurred, but why. and the why was quite simple. engineers could not see through all the soot and the coal burning locomotives that they developed and generated in that tunnel. so the railroad was terrified that it and its officers were going to be held criminally liable if not for this accident, then for the next one, an excellent being inevitable. so they decided to electrify the railroad. and by electrifying the railroad they were able to do two things that otherwise never could've happened if they were able to build a double decked terminal with a lower level and an upper level. they are no longer had to be an

open train shed for all the air to certainly. and again they could deck over the train yards on park avenue, creating a boulevard, creating land, the waldorf-astoria, office buildings, initially residential buildings for the most part, worth billions of dollars then and now. grand central was built to house the world's largest rail terminal. 44 platforms accommodating 67 tracks. that is much bigger than 10 station ever was. and, of course, one of the things that the new central was looking at what built this terminal was over its shoulder at this place going up on the westside, penn station because electrification meant something important to the pennsylvania railroad. at the pennsylvania and the nuke central were like the coke and pepsi of railroads, if you will. total fierce competition. but at that point the

pennsylvania railroad dropped all its passengers off in new jersey. hey had to take a ferry across to manhattan. but electrification meant they could build a tunnel under the hudson river. and they did that and then they built a tunnel under the east river to connect to the long island railroad. that was yet another reason that the new york central realized it had to build a giant majestic, grand central terminal in the middle of manhattan. in 2011, metro-north became the nation's busiest in your railroad. might not think of it as that but it surpassed the long island. and this book is not just about a building. it's sort of a biography of grand central if you will. it's about people. it's william, the chief engineer who came up with this ingenious plan to build grand central. brian hendricks on a metro cop

who befriended the homeless come either johnson who feels customers complaints in the information booth, the most frequent, guess what, where is the restroom? [laughter] second, is how do i get out of here because they're so many passageways. and the third, attribute to good taste i guess is where is the apple store? people can't find it because it is so subtly woven into the fabric of the terminal. and also to people like jaclyn on nasa's clearly played a major role in saving grand central. i did realize but she had a long history of historic preservation but when the dam was being built in egypt, the kennedy administration gave funds to reserve a lot of the antiquiti antiquities. and the egyptians said we would like to give you something in return for that. and jaclyn picked the temple of vendor, a little ditch you

realize that she would be living on fifth avenue across the street. when she had a dinner party she did call across the street and the metropolitan museum would light up the temple for her and her guess. that's clout in new york, right? [laughter] so one day when the city look like it had lost the suit, the railroad sued the city to avoid the designation of they wanted to build a skyscraper on top. the city was not going to appeal that ruling, which i didn't know it. because the city said it was going to be held liable for damages from the railroad if it is appealed and if it lost. and those could come up to $80 million which in those days was a lot of money.

so jacqueline onassis data store in your time learning about the plan for an appeal, the hope for an appeal, she called the municipal art society, laurie beckham and who later became head of the landmarks preservation commission was an intern in the office then and picked up the phone, and yelled over to the head of the landmark preservation commission, there's a woman who says she's jacqueline onassis on the phone. and, of course, it was. one of the things i enjoyed in researching the book was discovering secrets of grand central terminal. you go in the place and you see all these bare light bulbs on the sort of marky, in front of it these giant ornate brass chandeliers. couldn't they afford crystal or gloat or something more ornate? very deliberate. the vanderbilts were showing off electricity. they were saying this isn't gas

or some other means of illumination. we've got light bulbs which in 1913 were still relatively new, and they destined them all over the place. another thing you see if you look carefully and some of the decorated motifs are acorns. why acorns? it turns out acorns are on the family crest. i might add the invented family crest of the vanderbilts. why acorns? because from little acorns mighty oaks i can vanderbilts grow. so all over the place that are acorns and oakley's. one of the mistakes in grandson, the biggest mistake although most people don't know, although it was noticed a couple of days after the terminal opened by an alert commuter is the ceiling. 25,000 square feet of mistake. the constellations are backwards. now, exactly why they are

backwards no one is quite sure. the best explanation i could find is that the columbia univer aromer who devised this sky chart for the painters assumed they would hold it over their heads and pain. instead, they put it down and painted. so what you see actually is a heavenly view of the constellations, rather than a bottom up, ground the view from the main concourse. now, i was at a lecture like this a couple of weeks ago and point out there's also a little rectangle that you can spot on the southwest corner of the ceiling. it's about may be this big, very small, but it's the color of -- what? the color of these microphones. and what it is was a deliberate attempt to show before an and after. with the ceiling looked like before it was claimed in the 1990s. and what's interesting is when the engineers went up to say why

is this even this black, this grey, this covered with soot, they assumed it was from the senders and soap and spoke of the locomotives. it turned out it was from tar and nicotine of smokers at grand central station. but someone pointed out to me, they said did you notice which constellation that rectangle is near? the rectangle made from tar and nicotine. it is next to cancer. [laughter] the training course at grand central, all those departure times on the train boards are wrong. now, if you ever missed your drink, please don't call me at home. but 1:52 to white plains on the train boards really leaves at 1:53. the railroad gives you an extra minute to race down the platform to catch your train. so you know i can go take a

chance if you don't have to, but every one of those train departure times, in fact is wrong. i discovered who the owner of grand central is the fuji think the owner is? i assumed it was new york state or metro-north or the nta. it's a guy who never played with electric trains, was not invited to the grand central centennial gala because he was so scared. but he brought from his successor to the penn central ring road his company midtown trackage ventures bought ground -- grandson of brought one or six miles of track and leases it to metro-north. it's about a 200 year lease they don't have to worry. but metro-north has an option to buy the terminal in 2018 and probably will do that. metro-north-based two-and-a-half million dollars in rent to this man, andrew penson, a publicity shy owner, and they say that

doesn't sound like him -- like very much but the fact is metro-north also agreed to take over all of the environmental liabilities which were considerable for an industrial era railroad like the new york central was. the whispering gallery. i always thought this was one of those urban legends, something people just make a. if you stand outside the oyster bar, and you can see people doing this, it's all little weird, although bizarre, and they are standing and whispering into the wall, and they parabolic tile ceiling developed by raffaello, carries that sound over about 40 feet to the other end of the gallery, and you can hear people clear as a bell. it really is remarkable. so you walked out. so you walk down. in this i going to the oyster bar and you see all these people talking to the wall

courageously, only in new york, right? grand central also has the deepest basement in new york. it is 90 feet deep. that's deeper than the world trade center, deeper than the gold falls at the federal reserve, and the reason is it is where the transformers are that change the current for alternating current to direct current to drive the trains. and what's even more fascinating is that in a couple of years when the long island redwood east side access opens, that basement, that concourse will be 140 feet deep. 14 stories deep below the street level of 42nd street. colson whitehead in the colossus of new york road, as the earth cooled, grand central bubbled up through miles of magna lodged in the crust of this island, settled here, the first immigrant still unassimilated ever indigestible.

and there itis today as a monument, the 13-foot diameter clock facing 42nd street has been described as the world largest example of tiffany glass. that may be an urban legend because tiffany says they don't have any record of it. the limestone sculptures of minerva, hercules and mercury were considered the largest sculptural grouping in the world. they were sculpted just across the river in long island city. just recently the lincoln building or former lincoln building across the street from grand central originally named for lincoln, was rechristened grand central place in an affirmation of the term owes cachet, the cities the surgeon. imagine naming something after grand central in the '70s or '80s. the new york council hotel is now the western grand central. metro-north estimates that

10,000 people come to grand central every weekday just to eat. and ramps that the railroad makes because it made grand central into a destination gross is now $279 a year which in effect subsidize the ray road. instead of succumbing to the penn central ashbury shortsighted survival strategy of destroying the terminal and building a skyscraper above it, it was reconstituted in the original architects vision as a grand public space. robert stern wrote the architects read and stem, warren and whitmore created a convincing expression of the belief that the goals of capitalism are not inimical to the enhancement of the public realm. and then the metropolitan transformation authority, not because they do expect from a government entity, squared the

circle and chemistry that the public realm and capitalism could not only coexist, they could thrive together. grandson to, the product of local politics, bold architecture, brutal flexing of corporate muscle, visionary engineering, know what the building i think epitomizes the partnership that melted the best in stinks of government with public spirited private investment. there are inevitable comparisons of course with penn station. mike wallace, the cowriter of gotham, said that grand central was arguably the more transformative of the two stations in the rearrangement of manhattan's cultural geography. the central covered over its tracks, provide an underpinning for the pride of park avenue apartments, and haven to new york's superrich. we forget the superrich ha have

sort of been on the run for over a century as one island of upper class civility after another. washington square, union square was overrun by commerce and by common people. the vast park avenue structures provided a stability that the rich have never known in new york. the establishment on the upper east side as a wealthy enclave help draw hotels, department stores, luxury shops the channeled commuting managers and professionals from the rapidly developing and mostly affluent suburbs to the north back to midtown each day. this provided an incentive for corporations to relocate there. fostering a burst of hotel construction, restaurants, theaters. and, finally, the terminal itself was a powerful midtown

magnet. it's great soaring concourse, its barrel vaulted roman brown, its staircases, grand as the paris opera's. it's ceiling vaster than st. peter's. the romance of the 20 century limited service, all crucial factors in shifting the city's cultural and commercial center of gravity to its doorstep. in you can't go home again, thomas wolfe wrote of the late lamented penn station, great slant beams of motive light fell towards the floor, and the calm voice of time hovered along the walls and ceiling of that mighty room. a room murmur list with the immense and distant sound of time. today, penn station obviously is a very different place. vincent scully, memorably summed up what had been lost when he

said one end of the city like a god, one scuttles him down like a rat. paul goldberger wrote of grand central that it was never as overpowering or as grandiose as sensation. and that may be why it survived. it will be its way into the fabric of new york city so subtly, so tightly, that it couldn't be ripped out. the real brilliance of the place, for all its architectural glory, is the way in which it confirms the valleys of the urban ensemble. today, the sound of time reverberates in grand central, and with any other place that i can think of, it embodies the voice of the city and the rhythms of urban america. thanthank you so much for listeg and i'll be happy to answer whatever questions you might have.

[applause] >> folks, we have a microphone and we will go around. we will start on the side of the room. >> i would also like to introduce the man who really made this book possible, great photographs in it if you haven't seen it, the chief photographer for this book and the former photographer to the metro north railroad, frank english. [applause] >> can you tell me how the trains turned around? >> how do the trains turned around? another innovation at grand central. there are two that go around 40 streets of the trains coming into the station or the terminal can actually turn around and head out.

this is usually more important for long distance trains than current ones. most of the trains now have tabs, modem and scabs that either in anyway, and they come in and then sort of go out the other side. but it was an innovation at the time that there are two loops. grand central is said to have the safest men's room in america on the lower level because it was built to withstand a train zooming off the tracks of one of those lower loops. i don't think anything more needs to be said about that. >> thank you so much for your presentation. at the risk of -- [inaudible] said couple words about the new in many outcries -- >> a very good question.

when you think of grand central in terms of historic preservation as a landmark, and thank goodness it was saved back in the '70s, but they were two rnations at least of the grand central before the. the one that was originally built in 1871, and then in 1899-1900 it was rebuilt it was the original grand central depot. then they named it grand central station, and then after that train accident in 1902, william -- william wilgus persuaded the nuke center for the thing had to be torn down. they didn't need this gorgeous cantankerous type open train shed, because there was no more smoke from the electrified locomotives. and they could also death over park avenue. and i don't think there was much of an outcry. it was one of those things where the place had just been

renovated of huge before in 1900. 1900. so your neck and her two, 803 they decide they will tear down and build another place. and i think once people saw the plans for the new grand central terminal they realize it was far superior to anything that had been there before. >> [inaudible] >> which really change the beautiful profile of the building looking south on park there? >> william wilgus had this grand vision for terminal city, sort of a civic center, offer house. and, of course, ultimately in that new york's central building which stands on the north and of grand central passed the pan am building was added later. that wasn't there originally, but you're right, it is one of the two places i can think of, at least in manhattan, that

provides a real vista like that. you can look on park avenue. you can look down fifth avenue at washington square arch. you are not many other places in manhattan that are like that. the pan am building was built to make money. they tore down an old baggage handling place just north of the station and put up the pan am building and what was fascinating is when the penn center was arguing against the landmark designation later on, it was a little i a kid who is accused of killing his parents and says, and, hey, have mercy, i'm an orphan. because the lawyers for the penn central said, well, this has already been ruined as a landmark by the pan am building, which, of course, they had to build, so why worry about putting up another skyscraper? it was not a very persuasive argument. i thing most people, and believe it or not the abandoned building

was adapted to the site and made to be less mammoth than it actually was going to be a rigidly. but it still sticks out like a sore thumb. >> i'm curious, there are some wonderful railroad terminals in other cities. philadelphia, baltimore with a grand, provided great assistance to the cities. was a grand central before or after? >> there were a bunch that were contemporaneous. read and stem are building terminals for new york's central before they went to work at grand central. the big ones are roughly, if i'm correct, the late 1880s, '90s, the early part of the 20th century, but most of the modeling for grand central was

not on the river terminals and that's what made it so unique. if anything it barred from the school of architecture, french version, the grand staircase was, in fact, a model after the paris opera. while penn station is described as being inspired by the baths of caracol, there are people as a grand central was, too. but all those levels, the rams, the walkways, the sky windows, i mean, and innovation worry of form and function together, leading light in, letting air in and allowing people to walk from one part of the build to the other on those corridors, i find it a little unnerving frankly to walk on a glass floor. but people do that and it's one of the great sites at grand central is seen the silhouettes of people going by the twin

offices in various corners of the buildings. so much of it is original. the viaduct around the buildings, park avenue, which here is a building site in the middle of the \street/{-|}street bridge, son of trafficking get around it, most of that was innovative and ingenious at the time. not barred from other places. >> in the back on the right hand side. >> i don't know whether this is legend, but i'm serious, i read someplace that -- [inaudible] involved in grand central station. when she was in tears she looked for her brother and told him about the electric train spent you are close to it was i think alexander and he was the head of

the pennsylvania railroad. and i believe he was indeed mary's brother. >> [inaudible] >> yes, right, sure. he was the one who envisioned in station. he was head of the penn station river at the time. what's interesting come to come is penn station never have the same impact on me down that grand central did. me, with the post office, macy's, one or two other things, a couple of hotels, the pennsylvania, "the new yorker." but none of that's sweeping reconstruction revival renaissance of midtown that grand central triggered. >> i'm sure you know but grand central is the best reading place in the city. [inaudible]

>> absolutely. meeting under the clock. i had to meet more people that were in gaming, i said meet me at the clock and everyone who where it was good but the funny thing was when i met people at the clock, i would invariably meet someone else who i hadn't planned to meet. it's like being in the town square of new york. you were standing in the terminal and everyone goes by. by. by. something like an out of out after this really is, but something like 750,000 people passed through the terminal every day. every weekday. and when grand central opened, "the new york times" said sunday this is projected to have as many as 100 million passengers. well, and 2011 before sandy, it got up to 82 million growing, and we will probably hit that 100 million in not too many years. >> [inaudible]

>> good question. >> [inaudible]. >> okay, two questions. the bold, on the environmentally friendly? that's a problem because when the railroad wanted to put the bulbs in that were okay environmental friendly but also energy efficient to save money, the landmarks preservation commission said, you can't put those spiral fluorescent bulbs and. that's just totally out of character. so they had to find someone who developed bulbs that are not totally around like the original but a little oval, but that the landmarks preservation commission said were okay. 1944 i think it was actually 1942 there were not see saw it tours who landed at a mccance is from u-boat and they rendezvoused at grand central terminal. more specifically, they went into the newsreel theater, believe it or not, to catch up on war news. i mean, talk about the banality

of evil. but it's not entirely clear whether grand central was one of their targets to sabotage or not. one other thing i forgot to mention that grand central, that justifies the subtitle of our train station transform america, the civil rights movement was nurtured at grand central. a. philip randolph and the sleeping car porters brother really begin at grand central at a meeting up in harlem spent hours when asked about that theater, and when it started and how long it lasted. was there any connection? >> the answer is know but i don't think edison had a connection. it started probably in the '20s or at the latest the '30s, and he kept going i

think into the '50s and maybe even the early '60s. >> [inaudible] >> it's the perfect thing for people waiting for a train. he might have had to have seen on with one or doctor zhivago, but you sort of go in and see a couple of newsreels. >> good you tell us where the newsreel room is and what it is used for today? >> it is a retail store of some sort, i think it is in the gray bar passage. something else in the gray bar passage that i just discovered only recently that is kind of weird. because standard time begin at grand central, there's a clock that if you're going from lexington avenue toward the main concourse you can see this clock. and under the clock engraved in the marble it says eastern

standard time. because the railroad was so proud of the fact that eastern standard time has begun at grants and. the problem is that's wrong about eight or nine months a year when it's daylight time. the clocks are on daylight time but the sign still says eastern standard. >> can you tell us are there any plans to have a day when -- an old trend that is so function we can get a ride on? [inaudible] >> the films are playing in different groups are, there's no place you can see was afterwards speak with i think it will be an ongoing exhibit if i'm not mistaken at the transit museum.

frank, do you know? no. but there is an exhibit in vanderbilt hall of the history of the station, of the terminal. one of the interesting things about that room, again you just learned so much, you walk through that room and the floor is for road, this marble floor. and a citizen, why are the first in a for? it turns out that was the main waiting room and people would be sitting on the benches, and you know, with a few going back forth in patiently waiting for a train and carved for us in this floor. -- furloughs. >> i wanted to know about a story, it's true that there was a train car underneath grand central terminal that franklin roosevelt used to get up to the waldorf-astoria in a special elevator that no one could see

that he was handicapped. is that the train car? >> that is a matter of some conjecture. there is a drinker, what looks like a freight car, looks like a baggage car that could well have held at the ours car. it is a size in which a car with it. the doors are wide enough. the car was that grand central. no question. i look at secret service logs from the 1940s to confirm this. roosevelt took a train to the waldorf and wind up in a private elevator into the hotel. so it's not entirely clear whether that baggage car actually was used for his vehicle. but one of the things in researching the book i discovered that just amazed me is whenever the president of the

united states is in town now and staying at the waldorf, there is a fully manned train running under the waldorf astoria on that side waiting to whisk in out of town in case he requires an emergency means of egress in case there's some biological attack on the street or an incredible traffic accident or congestion. there is a train waiting on duty manned 24 hours a day when the president is in town to taking out. >> i also want answered the lady's question on where was the grand central theater. if you go into grand central terminal and you see there's a wine store their, a liquor store, that's where grand central theater used to be. if you look up on the ceiling

there's spee space you can see a bureau there, that's right. >> jacqueline kennedy is known for marshaling -- that saved the station. i wonder if you would not specifically what powers she was able to garner to bring energy. what people did she know, what influence specifically did she have to bring this about speaks what she had was the power of public opinion. and as i said, the city was this close to not appealing the decision that said, it overstepped its bounds legally in declaring grand central a landmark. now we debate whether the mayor has the power to ban 32-ounce soft drinks. but then it was a question of couldn't do city exercise its

police power. did declare an grand central a landmark and barring the penn central railroad from building a revenue producing skyscraper constitute a taking under the law? well, she read that story and called the municipal arts society and with the municipal art society, with philip johnson, with freddie pappert, with a number of other people including ed koch, pat moynihan, rally public opinion and galvanized the movement to save grand central. now, did that include the decisions themselves? one never knows. i think judges are somewhat swayed by public opinion, but it certainly created the momentum to keep that appeal going, which it did until i think it was 1978 when the supreme court ultimately ruled and said, yes, this landmark law is valid and

again set the stage for landmark preservation all over the country. >> [inaudible] >> did anything ever happened to the benches in the waiting room? there are still some benches in a much, much, much smaller waiting area near the station master's office in the -- i'm trying to envision it. i guess the west side of the terminal. very small some of the benches are there. i don't know what happened to the other benches. they work great, mighty oak like from little acorns benches. >> [inaudible] >> may be. >> [inaudible] >> i will find out. that's another thing i will have learned in researching the book. >> i wanted to say to that lady's question, -- >> why don't you come up your?

>> i may tour guide. but those other benches are down in the middle of the food court. in the middle of the other staircase goes down from the top, that's where some of the other benches are. >> speaking of staircases, there was a sequel and staircase to give your standing in the middle of the main concourse is a secret staircase but and reminded me of the orson welles movie, the third man, where he disappears into the kiosk and winds up in the sewers of vienna. in the middle of the information booth it was a spiral staircase that goes down to the information booth on the lower level, which never see, can't see. there's a little door that opens and it's just one of those fascinating things to another thing, the great staircase, the

marble staircase on the eastern end of the main concourse, when they were renovating grand central in the '90s, the discovered that in the original plans there was supposed to be a twin staircase on the west side. and it's not entirely clear why that wasn't built, but the prevailing wisdom is that they figured it was going to go to the eastside? that were tenements, there were cow pastures. why do we need another staircase for, so it never got built. and then when you're restoring a landmark, could you put something back that wasn't there? so that triggered an enormous philosophical debate about landmarks and preservation. they did put it there. it is gorgeous. it is slightly different from the east staircase because it had to conform to the americans with disabilities act. so the risers and the width of the stairs just a little bit different from the original one on the east side. >> any other questions?

>> i once read that one of the earlier people involved with the station -- [inaudible] spent one of the people involved in the station lived there. the campbell apartment which is a great place to go drink a yuppies drink -- [laughter] mr. campbell was on the board of the new central railroad. he had a company that was the precursor i think the dun & bradstreet, a credit rating company. he did not live in that apartment. enormous, he could've lived in it because it was so big. he had it decorated. he transported a medieval palace i think from italy or france and had it retreated there, which you can now see. but he did not actually lived there. i can't vouch for the fact that he never took a nap there, but he actually an apartment on park avenue, and later in a house in

connecticut. he was a rather eccentric character, however. among other things, used to work at his desk with his pants off. because he was so obsessed with not having them rankled him he would take off his pants and hang them on a pants press when he was at his desk. so i'm not sure if you'd wanted in getting up to greet you when you walk into his office, but that was mr. campbell. >> any questions? could you speak to the possible coming transformation of the area around grand central, yeah, what you know if you have any thoughts one way or the other? >> mayor bloomberg wants to resell in the area around grand central come up his own it so that would be more and talibanized at one of the province is a lot of those buildings are probably an

anachronistic. they are old. they're not particularly suited for high ceilings, for the internet. there are some landmarks in that area of course, lever house. i think the waldorf is a landmark. sunday others. but there are also some buildings in that area that probably ought to be landmarks. the helmet club, the gray bar building, the roosevelt hotel. and they may be declared a landmarks. the municipal art society has identified i think 17 landmark properties in that area. but the mayor wants to get this doneefore he leaves office, and you know, there's no question that some of those might be threatened by end up zoning. but again this is a city that has always been evolving. there was no outcry when grand central was torn down in the early 1900s. some of these buildings may well

have to go for new construction, if there's a market for. i think the market forces will probably determined that more than anything else. and i'm not sure the market forces are there for it immediately, given what's going on downtown and given particularly what's going on on the westside, the hudson yards project. that's a lot of new space coming online. spin is there a nonfiction author of book you'd like to see featured on the tv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. here's a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country.

>> please let us know about book fairs and festivals happening in your area. we would be happy to add them to our list. >> the intelligence here is driven by this uncertainty that religion and reason are in different boxes, that science and religion are in different boxes, and the two actually are at war with each other. they are dominical to each other. someone who is rational is not

religious. someone who is religious is not rational. science is rational, it is the antido trelig irrationality. this itself is the ultimate irrational idea. because the belief that religion is inimical to science and reason in the west is completely untrue. religion underpins science and reason. reason. >> next weekend, author, columnist and winner of the prize for journalism, melanie phillips will take your calls, e-mails, facebook comments in tweets. three hours live next sunday at noon eastern here on booktv. >> booktv continues with ann kirschner. she recounts the life of josephine marcus earp, the common law wife and partner of over 50 years the law man wyatt earp. this is about one hour.