Ugly Gehry Building Right Behind A Beautiful New York Landmark

"Downtown Manhattan - at City Hall Park and New York by Gehry building"
Photo Credit: NYC Daily).

The site NYC Daily posts (almost) daily photos of New York City. Here is one photo I found especially interesting. The photo is titled: "Downtown Manhattan - at City Hall Park and New York by Gehry building" (I've posted the image above, credit due to NYC Daily).

I wasn't interested in the Gehry building (that post-modern horror), but in the red (brick?) building in front.

I did some searches around the web, and finally identified the ornate brick-red building. It is called the Potter Building after Orlando B. Potter, the real estate developer who commissioned its construction. It was designed and built by architect N.G. Starkweather from 1883 to 1886. The building is located at 35-38 Park Row in Manhattan.

The red stone is terra cotta, originally obtained from Orlando Potter's New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company. Although no longer producing terra cotta, the building still stands.

New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company

The Potter building replaced the New York World Building which was destroyed by a fire in 1882. The New York World was a newspaper published in New York between 1860 and 1911. Joseph Pulitzer bought the paper in 1883, when it became (notoriously) successful. Internal disputes caused the paper to fold in 1931. In 2011, the Columbia University School of Journalism launched an online version of the paper "to provide New York City citizens with accountability journalism about government operations that affect their lives." The latest title on the New York World website is the slogan "Get inside your government," so I doubt this is a review of the socio-cultural happenings in the city.

There is more on the architecture and design history of the building here, as well as photos of the building's details. The building was built mostly in terra cotta.

More on the terra cotta facade:

The [Potter Building] facade was constructed of brick and terracotta, which was chosen by Potter due to its fire resistance and low cost. This soon led to terracotta becoming a popular element in other New York skyscrapers. It was a revolutionary structure in that it was virtually fireproof, made possible by the iron frame and the terracotta, and was the first use of fire-protected steel frame. [Source]

There are many more interesting buildings surrounding the Potter Building. I don't know why blogs and websites which post such architecturally interesting buildings don't provide information on the buildings. I will search around to identify these buildings, and post on them some time soon.

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New York Fire Escapes

Below, I've collected several examples of fire escapes in upper Manhattan from various sources on the web.

I went to the Cloisters a second time with a friend. It is not enough to go once, and even twice doesn't cut it. The ride up to the Cloisters is an experience in itself. The best way to get there is on the M4 bus, which might crawl along its route, but this gives one ample time to observe the scenery. Several tourist buses were on this route, most likely for a steep price. The M4, for a mere $2.25, goes all the way up Broadway right up to the Cloisters. The most interesting part of the ride up is probably between 155th Street up to around 193rd Street.


"Don't look at what's below," I quipped, as we traveled through the area known as Hamilton Heights, between 135th Street and 159th Street. The buildings' bodegas and dollar stores are a messy presence on the ground levels, but the upper parts still retain their beauty.


The outdoor fire escape stairs fascinated me. They briefly reminded me of West Side Story, but these are intricate, beautiful wrought iron works, which are works of art. I have never noticed them, or bothered to look at them, during my previous trips to New York. But, that is the nature of New York. Despite the imposing presence of the skyscrapers, the city's building facades are subtle, and can easily be ignored. "Subtle isn't what one associates with New York," said my New Yorker friend.

I have posted above photos I have culled from around the web buildings with these wrought iron fire escapes. I will write a post on the history of these structures soon.


I don't like to end on a negative note, but the above image shows buildings whose ground level messy bodegas and stores still do not spoil the beautiful architecture and stairways above.

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A Road Less Taken

A view of the Cloisters with the Hudson River

I cannot upload photos from my camera to the computer I'm using while in New York. I will make a file (a post) of photos I took here when I return to Toronto.

But, there are plenty of online images to download.

I tried to get to the Cloisters today. They are a branch of the Metropolitan Museum, but they are somewhere in the Netherlands of New York City. They are located in an area called Fort Tyron Park. The closest street intersection is 190th Street. I'm not sure if this is the Bronx, or if it is still Harlem, but I decided to take the M4 bus which supposedly goes straight there. It didn't happen so easily.

There was some kind of parade (actually it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, or more precisely the National Puerto Rican Day Parade - what is "national" about Puerto Ricans in New York?) which held up buses between 44th and 79th on Fifth Avenue. At one point I waited close to half an hour to get a bus. When one finally arrived and we climbed on, we had to get off on 135th Street because...well the driver couldn't give a reason. He parked the bus and waited inside. Then this parked bus suddenly took life, and the patient group that was waiting for another (some people just left - to catch a cab?!) was allowed back on this one.

But it really was worth the wait. The ride on the M4 from about 135th street down to 79th was incredible. The bus went down Riverside Drive, along the Hudson and past the beautiful Riverside Church (which I think is even more beautiful than St. Patrick's, or St. John the Divine's just above 110th Street) until the driver turned on 79th Street and took Broadway. I went all the way to 59th Street and Columbus Circle and took the M10 down Central Park West, to get more views of another of New York's beautiful park. I got off just before 110th Street, where Central Park ends, to get to where I was staying on the Upper West Side. The ride took shorter than I thought, although it is a good 45 minutes. I highly recommend this "tour" for a mere bus token ($2.25). There were plenty of tourist buses taking a similar route, and I'm sure their's was an expensive affair.

A view of the Riverside Church with the Hudson River

One of the reasons I wanted (want) to go to the Cloisters is to see the beautiful unicorn tapestries.

The Unicorn in Captivity
At The Cloisters

(I've linked to backgrounds on The Cloisters and the tapestries, but I will write some more tomorrow on how they got to New York and to such a location. It is a fascinating bit of New York history.)

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“A conspicuous ornament to the upper part of the city”

Above is a building I pass regularly during my stay in New York. It is on Central Park West, and 106th Street. It has an interesting history.

Here's a website which explains its social and architectural history:

Cancer, in the first decades after the Civil War, had been associated by most with poverty and filth. As education and understanding of the disease improved, wealthy New Yorkers donated money for the establishment of the New York Cancer Hospital – chief among these being John Jacob Astor. By the time the cornerstone was laid on May 17, 1884 $360,000 had been raised -- $200,000 of that being donated by Astor...

[N]ews of Grant’s [cancer] affliction spread across the country and the disease was given new-found national attention, prompting further donations to the hospital which depended solely on private funding...

The site chosen was on Central Park West (then still called 8th Avenue) and 106th Street. Along with the commission, architect Charles Coolidge Haight was given guidelines from physicians on the most up-to-the-minute theories on hospital design.

The website continues to describe the specifications then required of a cancer hospital.

Below is descriptions of the building's architecture (from website linked above):

The building which The Times called “a conspicuous ornament to the upper part of the city” was built of pressed Philadelphia brick with stone trim. An arched loggia connected two of the towers on the first floor, topped by a deep, balustraded balcony on the second; these were included by Haight to give patients access to air and sunlight.

More information on the architect, Charles C. Haight can be found here and here. And this site has architectural drawings

The hospital changed locations in 1955. The building on 106th Street was converted into the Towers Nursing home. This was shut down in 1977, with the intentions to demolish the building. This was prevented when the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission gave it a landmark status.

Renovations on the the building started in 2001, and were completed in 2004. Now, the building houses luxury apartments.

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Grand New York Architecture For the Public Good

American Youth Hostels building
on Amsterdam Avenue and 103rd Street, in New York City

The photograph above is from New York Architect, which
has many more photographs of the building

[Click on above image to see larger size]

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I'm in New York for a couple of weeks, and I am constantly amazed at the city's architecture. Almost anywhere I walk, there is something that surprises (astonishes) me.

The above building is one I stumbled onto on Amsterdam Avenue and 103rd street.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the building:

The flagship residence of the American Youth Hostels in the United States is in New York City, located in a landmark building designed by noted architect Richard Morris Hunt. This popular hostel occupies the entire east blockfront of Amsterdam Avenue between 103d and 104th Streets in Manhattan.

Here's information on the architect of the building, Richard Morris Hunt:

Richard Morris Hunt (October 31, 1827 – July 31, 1895) was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture. Hunt was, according to design critic Paul Goldberger writing in The New York Times, "American architecture's first, and in many ways its greatest, statesman." Aside from Hunt's sculpting of the face of New York City, including designs for the facade and Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty and many Fifth Avenue mansions lost to the wrecking ball, Hunt founded both the American Institute of Architects and the Municipal Art Society.

The building was originally:

...designed for the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females (1883). [It] was renovated in the late 20th century and is now a youth hostel.[Source Wikipedia]

Here's a site which gives more descriptive information on why the building was commissioned by "the women who ran the Association for the Relief of Respectable and Indigent Females."

The building design and construction started in 1881, and it was completed in 1883.

Here's more on the architecture of the building:

The Association Residence Nursing Home, also called the Association for the Relief of Respectable, Aged and Indigent Females, is an historic building in New York City built from 1881-1883 to the design of Richard Morris Hunt in the Victorian Gothic style...An addition was constructed on the south end of the property in 1907, which contained seven Tiffany windows which are now in the collection of the Morse Museum of American Art. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.[Source: Wikipedia]

And finally, on the "demise and rehabilitation" of the building:

Financial problems due to the longer life expectancy of residents began following World War II. Robert Moses proposed razing the building as part of an Upper West Side slum clearance project. When Medicaid funds became available to nursing homes in the early 1970s, the Association planned to tear down and replace the building with a modern facility. A group of historic preservationists with ties to nearby Columbia University fought to preserve the building, making it into a community cause. Despite a fire during the New York City blackout of 1977 the preservationists prevailed and by the late 1970s, the building was acquired by the City of New York, and declared a New York City Landmark in 1983. During the 1980s the building was unoccupied as American Youth Hostels arranged neighborhood and government support for rehabilitating the building. They opened the hostel in January 1990 and with 670 beds it is now the largest hostel in North America.[Source: Wikipedia]

The building was designated a landmark site in 1983 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission:

On the basis of the careful consideration of the history, the architecture and other features of the building, the Landmarks Preservation Commission finds that the Association Residence for Respectable Aged Indigent Females (Association Residence for Women), has a special character, special historical and aesthetic interest and value as part of the development, heritage and cultural characteristics of New York City. [Source: Landmarks Presevation Commission, April 12, 1983, Designation List 164 (pdf file)]

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Resurrecting Ishtar

Reconstruction of The Ishtar Gate
Pergamon Museum, Berlin

It may seem trivial to write about pop stars, and many are innocuous enough, but Madonna takes everything up a notch, as I wrote here. Her gyrating through our culture affects everybody. The blogger The Vigilante Citizen also seems to think so.

He compares her appearance at the Superbowl half time show last February to a Babylonian goddess. Yes, Madonna did come decked out as some kind of exotic ancient priestess, so this may not have been a difficult analogy to make. But TVC explains the significance of her "costume":

Madonna herself is dressed in a way that highly resembles an Ancient Sumerian/Babylonian goddess, Inanna-Ishtar.

Ishtar was a powerful and assertive goddess whose areas of control and influence included warfare, love, sexuality, prosperity, fertility and prostitution. She sought the same existence as men, enjoying the glory of battle and seeking sexual experiences. Madonna’s portrayal as Ishtar is therefore quite interesting as one can argue that the pop singer has embodied, throughout her career, the same assertive yet highly sexual qualities of Ishtar, even achieving a state of power in the music industry that is usually reserved to men. On an esoteric level, Ishtar is associated with the planet Venus, known as the Morning Star or the Evening Star.

I also compare Madonna, and her highly sexualized performances, to an ancient goddess. I wrote:

Madonna's homosexual men [in her video Girl Gone Wild] are like the castrated dancers of the Greek goddess Cybele, who danced around their goddess into sexual frenzy.

We have reached a new level of Godlessness in our culture. But this doesn't result with an empty, atheistic, world, but with a world full of gods. People still need figures to worship. Rejecting God only leaves an empty space to fill up with other gods. Leading cultural icons are re-inventing and re-introducing ancient gods and goddesses into our culture. Popular culture, through powerful venues and mass gatherings such as television, giant pop concerts and spectacular sports arenas, displays these rites and rituals with grandeur, hypnotizing even the most jaded of viewers. It won't be long before those empty souls are filled with such offerings. Madonna is not merely re-enacting some forgotten ritual, but is resurrecting an ancient, pagan religion and its goddess.

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Ghost Trains at City Hall

[Photos by John-Paul Palescandolo & Eric Kazmirek]. The link is to the website of the photographers, who write more technical information on how John-Paul Palescandolo took the photos.

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Above are photographs of New York City's City Hall "ghost station" which was shut down in 1945. More photographs, plus some photographs of the opening day of the station, are at the Daily Mail.

From Wikipedia:

City Hall, also known as City Hall Loop, was the original southern terminal station of the first line of the New York City Subway, built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), named the "Manhattan Main Line", and now part of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line. Opened on October 27, 1904, this station underneath the public area in front of City Hall [which] was designed to be the showpiece of the new subway...employing Romanesque Revival architecture. The platform and mezzanine feature Guastavino tile, skylights, colored glass tilework and brass chandeliers. Passenger service was discontinued on December 31, 1945, making it a ghost station, although the station is still used as a turning loop for 6 and [6] trains. [More at Wikipedia]

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Post-Modernism Can Be Defeated!

A couple of days ago, I posted a photo of some highrise buildings from near the lakeshore. I identified one building as the Lombard Place. I went back again to have a closer look. I took shots of the interior of the building, which has an Art Deco feel. The building was actually completed in 1962, and functions as an office. Its architects, Bergman and Hamann, have a prolific portfolio around Toronto, including the Toronto Dominion Centre, which was a collaboration with Mies Van der Rohe, and the Eaton Centre, which was recently in the news.

I can't find anything on the interior ground floor ceiling, but it seems to be part of the original design.

Tall, lifeless glass buildings do not have to be part of a city's highrise cityscape. Ingenious designers can produce interesting buildings, as part of a city's cluster of buildings, and with interesting interiors. Post-modernism can be defeated!

[Photos by KPA]

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The Pomposity of the Centre Pompidou

Here's more from the charming "picture" book Paris Versus New York by cartoonist/designer Vahram Muratyan (I posted one of his juxtaposed images here). He is comparing the Centre Pompidou with the Guggenheim. I would beg to differ here again. The sprawling Centre Pompidou is an unattractive mesh of tubes. It sits in its own huge "place," separated it from the rest of the Parisian architecture, both in style and in its self-containment. The Guggenheim is nestled between New York City's buildings, not claiming some pompous space but fitting in (albeit in its own unique way) with the city's architecture.

This is what I meant by the decadent beauty of Paris (what a sacrilegious thing to say!). The city's beauty, rather than inspire more grand architecture, seems to have produced such monstrosities as the Centre Pompidou (named after one of France's president, no less).

The "experience" of walking in the Guggenheim is charming, spiraling up the "shell" to reach the various galleries. All one does as one maneuvers the various floors of the Centre Pompidou is stare out onto an ugly concrete "Place" with hippy "artists" using it as their playground. The beautiful Paris buildings are in the distant background.

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On My Way to the Waterfront

I didn't know how to put these unrelated photos (below) in one posting, but they are really connected through the thread of my walk down York Street, all the way to the lake shore.

I planned to do two things during this walk. One was to walk down to the waterfront and take early summer photos of the lake. The water is not the usual hazy pale blue, which is the color it gets later in the summer when the lake has warmed up, but a colder, darker blue with plenty of waves.

The second plan was to keep walking back up to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is a little further north (and west) to see the Picasso exhibition, for which I had bought a half price ticket (at $12.50, it is a bargain), and also to visit the gallery's permanent collections during the Wednesday nights free entry (from 6pm-8:30pm). I reckoned I would rush through Picasso in half an hour and go to the various permanent collection galleries until the gallery closed. Which is exactly what I did. I will write about both of these visits soon (but Picasso's will be brief, as you can see I am NO fan, but I had to see this "event" in Toronto considering I have an art blog).

In the meantime, below are some photos I took on my way down (with a couple of detours here and there).

York Street at Adelaide, a few short blocks north of the lake shore

A woman stopped to ask me what I saw. I said I liked the layers of highrises, with the interesting ogee point of the Trump Tower, the red facade of the Scotia Bank building and the triangular indentation in a darker color, and the exotic top of the Lombard Place building (in front of the Trump Tower and the Scotia building).

Union Station at Front Street

I've blogged about Union Station here, including posting photos of its interior. This sprawling building, built when rail travel was a grand affair and train stations were grand buildings, is right by an unattractive highway exit.

Lake Ontario Buoy Ring

[Photos by KPA]

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The Chrysler Still Stands

The image above is titled at this site as "Shadows on the Avenue, c. 1930"
meaning Fifth Avenue. A commentator on the site writes:

I know you say circa 1930 but I can date the image almost exactly;

The double decker bus (right side of frame traveling away) is a 1936 Yellow Coach Model 735 operating for the Fifth Avenue Coach Company, and judging by the latest cars I would say the image is about 1937 vintage.

The two Fifth Avenue Coach buses to the left of the frame heading at us are from the mid twenties.

Notice how well-dressed all the pedestrians are, both men and women with hats, long coats and some with fur trims.
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If I were to be re-born (reincarnated?) at any period, it would be during the late 1920s and 1930s. The Art Deco period is really my period.

Recently, I saw this photo (posted above) of the Art Deco Chrysler Building (which was completed in 1931) in New York City with some modern pedestrians below it. What a blemish! What would the original architects and builders of New York have thought at such ugliness! Well, at least they're spared that.

Above are some gowns from the 1930 (admittedly they are ball gowns, and no one would have worn them in the streets in daylight) but they capture the style, confidence and sense of aesthetics that people still had only half a century ago. We have lost a lot in such a short period.

The photo below that is of a 1930s street scene with pedestrians.

I was in New York during a brief, busy visit last December. I rushed downtown to have a quick peek at the Chrysler as I ran to my commitments. There was a lot of high rise construction going on in the city, with a few new glass towers I hadn't seen before. At least the Chrysler still stands, and outshines any of the new additions.

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Doors At Old City Hall and Magritte's Clouds

I posted a photo of the doorway at the Old City Hall yesterday, and I chose to post the one which cropped off the bottom half of the door.

This was an instinctive choice, I didn't really think much about it. But, looking back at the full length f the door, I notice now that the clouds reflecting on the window panes of the door are much clearer on the cropped version.

And to be completely honest ( :-) ), I didn't notice the clouds in the window panes as I was taking the photos in the first place. I was more interested in the Romanesque engravings above the doorway, a well as the carvings on top of the doors.

Still, something interesting came out of my shoot. The clouds in the window panes resemble the cloud paintings that modernist painter Magritte was famous for. And modernists are big on the "element of surprise," something which happens when we are "not thinking" or "not reasoning" but let our subconscious lead us to the right image. I guess my subconscious saw those clouds, registered them, and influenced my conscious being to take the photo.

Whatever the reason, it worked!

René Magritte
"The Human Condition", 1933.
Oil on canvas

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Doors At Old City Hall

Doors At Old City Hall
[Photo by KPA]

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Etching of the East Room at the White House

I had blogged earlier on Michelle Obama and Jill Biden in the White House's East Room, and its "lovely canary yellow drapes." While looking for more information on the East Room, I found this etching from the website The White House Museum, dated "around" 1858. There are more archival photos of the White House rooms at the website, through various renovations and presidents.

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Cow Rumps

[Photo by KPA]

I had taken a photo of these placid cows at the Toronto Dominion Centre (the banking center of Toronto) about a year ago, but focused more on the business men than on the sculptures. Above is a recent view of those lovely animals, beautifully sculpted by Joe Farfard.

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Spring Flowers at City Hall

Toronto's Old City Hall
[Photo by KPA]

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Spring Flowers and a Bit of Toronto History

The Toronto Coach Terminal
[Photo by KPA]

The Toronto Coach Terminal, built in 1931 by architect Charles Dolphin, still stands as part of Toronto's history. It was once considered a grand building, but is now dwarfed by the downtown skyscrapers, and the inside has lost the grandeur of its heyday. Still, the building stands out in its own way on the boring strip of Dundas and Bay, and the interior is light and airy enough to make traveling by bus an exciting adventure.

Toronto Coach Terminal
[Source: Urban Toronto]

Toronto Coach Terminal in 1931, then known as the
Gray Coach Terminal, built in the Art Deco style by Charles Dolphin
[Source: Wikipedia]

Coach Terminal Opening in 1931.
Ribbon ceremony with W.H. Price, acting premier of Ontario
[Source: The Toronto Star Photo Gallery]

A Grey Coach Lines bus waiting to departing 1932
[Source: The Toronto Star Photo Gallery]

A Grey Coach Terminal Interior, 1931
[Image Source: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 16, Series 71,
Item 9035, via Wikipedia]

A Grey Coach Terminal Interior, Now
[Image Source: Canadian Public Transit Board]

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Slothful City

Pedestrians on Fifth Avenue in midtown
Alfred Eisenstaedt
1942

Below are some photos of New York City that the ever-diligent photographers at NYC Daily Pictures recently posted. I think they are good images, capturing beautiful sun light making the building glow on the top photo; the background curtain of the Pan Am building in the distance in the second photo; trees, flags and signs making patterns in the third photo; and the Empire State looming in the background in the fourth.

Yet, look at the people. They are an overweight, under-dressed, slothful lot. In one of the most beautiful cities in the world (well, some wold say handsome), we have the ugliest women, or the women dressed in the ugliest manner, walking down its avenues.

Compare these photos of the enlightened 21st century with the one at the top of the blog. It was taken in 1942 by Alfred Eisenstaedt (the photographer who took the famous V–J Day in Times Square photograph). One could argue that midtown Fifth Avenue is not the same as the downtown, more bohemian Fifth Avenue that NYC Daily Pictures has posted, and that midtown Fifth Avenue women are smart, even in 2012. But here is a link to shoppers by Saks Fifth Avenue, and it is the same story of jeans, shapeless coats and dreary colors. Once again, the building outshines the pedestrians. In the pre-slothful era, extending to the 1940s period of Eisenstaedt photograph and into the 1950s, women complemented the buildings around them, looking worthy to walk beside them.

1 World Trade Center- view from 6th Avenue in Chelsea

Park Avenue South - view from Union Square, NYC

Broadway at Herald Square, 35th Street, NYC

Monday morning at Fifth Avenue. Chelsea, NYC

[Above photos from NYC Daily Pictures]

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The Grandness of Train Stations

[A series of photographs are posted at the end of the blog post]

I regularly view the photographs that are posted on the photography blog NYC: Daily Photos (photos are often posted daily, sometimes with a bit of a hiatus), and I saw the recent photo of the interior of New York's Grand Central Terminal.

I've posted below photos that I had filed away of Union Station, Toronto's train station. I find similarities between Union Station and Grand Central Terminal, which I discuss pictorially and descriptively below.

I often find that Toronto architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mimic New York buildings of the same era, trying to instill some of the American grandeur into the Canadian cityscape. Union Station is a grand example of this, resembling the imposing architecture of Grand Central Terminal (although I cannot yet verify if Canadian architects were specifically copying Grand Central Terminal, or just using a generalized architecture styles of the period. Impressive train stations were a common feature in large cities of this era).

Here's information on the Beaux Art design and history of Union Station, which opened in 1927.

And here's information on Grand Central Terminal's architecture. Grand Central Terminal, as it is called now, opened in 1913. The 1871 original, smaller, building called Grand Central Depot (photo below) was demolished:

After a steam locomotive accident in 1902, the station was redesigned with a two-level terminal to accommodate electric trains.

Here's more on Grand Central Depot:

There have been three structures at East 42nd Street and Park Avenue, bearing the name Grand Central...[The first one, Grand Central Depot], which opened in 1871, brought the lines of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem River Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad together under one roof.

According to this site, the terminal's reconstruction and renovation history spans over 130 years.

The first terminal of that name [Grand Central] was erected in 1871 at Fourth Avenue (now Park) and 42nd Street, then close to the edge of the built-up part of the city. It was conceived and built by Cornelius Vanderbilt,

The terminal replaced an earlier nondescript building further downtown at 26-27th Street and Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South).

Renovations in 1886 began to expand the building:

Long distance and commuter travel grew much faster than expected, so Grand Central had to be expanded in 1886, and comprehensively renovated in 1898. But as traffic continued to grow, it was clear that a new terminal was needed.

And finally, extensive work began in 1902:

[I]n January 1902 there was a disastrous accident. In the tunnel at 58th Street, with visibility greatly impaired by smoke and steam, an inbound express smashed into the rear of a local that had stopped, killing and injuring scores of people. The public was outraged, resulting a year later in both the city and state outlawing the operation of steam locomotives in Manhattan after 1908...

William J. Wilgus (1865-1949), chief engineer of the New York Central, proposed, proposed instead thorough, imaginative, and innovative solutions that function superbly to this day:

1) construct two levels of tracks below street level, the upper for long-distance trains, the lower for suburban trains;
2) eliminate the steam locomotives and move all trains by electric power instead;
3) construct a monumental terminal building; and
4) sell air rights above the new underground train yards, permitting developers to erect buildings there and pay rent to the railroad.

From the Grand Central Terminal site:

[A] comprehensive revitalization plan based on the Master Plan for Grand Central Terminal. Construction began in 1996 with the cleaning of the Main Concourse Sky Ceiling...

The revitalization project culminated with a gala Rededication Celebration of Grand Central Terminal on October 1, 1998. This event garnered both national and international media attention, and marked the beginning of a new chapter of this venerable New York City landmark.

Over the years since these major works, the terminal has gone through various projects, from Donald Trump's renovation of the exterior, to the restoration of the Main Concourse ceiling by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Ending in 2007, the exterior was again cleaned and restored, starting with the west facade on Vanderbilt Avenue and gradually working counterclockwise. The project involved cleaning the facade, rooftop light courts, and statues; filling in cracks, repointing stones on the facade, restoring the copper roof and the building's cornice, repairing the large windows of the Main Concourse, and removing the remaining blackout paint applied to the windows during World War II. The result is a cleaner, more attractive, and structurally sound exterior, and the windows allow much more light into the Main Concourse.
[Source: Wikipedia: Grand Central Terminal Restorations]

While doing Google image search, I found photographs of Grand Central Terminal in the 1940s by John Collier, including photographs of passengers. According to Wikipedia, Collier worked in photography and visual anthropology, and this education site further elaborates that:

John Collier Jr. applied still photography and film to cross-cultural understanding and analysis.

Many photographers have also documented the building, some artistically. I've posted some impressionable images below.

The full-on light streaming in the early photos of Grand Central (see the 1929 photo posted below - The main concourse at Grand Central Terminal) will never be reproduced according to this photographer because:

(1) skyscrapers now block that exact light from shining through the windows at that position

and

(2) [Grand Central Terminal] is now a ‘smoke free’ place and so the cigarette & cigar smoke that mainly created the haze in the original photo will be never more.

Still, the grandeur of the station remains, and the windows let in enough sun to bathe the interior with majestic light.
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Interior of Union Station, Toronto
KPA

Interior of Union Station, Toronto
KPA

Grand Central Depot, ca. 1885
H.A. Dunne Archive

Grand Central Terminal, 1941
John Collier
The Library Of Congress

The main-concourse information
desk at Grand Central Terminal
in New York, October 1941
John Collier
Shorpy.com

The main concourse at
Grand Central Terminal, 1929
New York Transit Museum

Four-faced clock at a kiosk
inside Grand Central Terminal
on the east side of Manhattan, with
a noticeable amount of sunlight
shining through some of the windows.
Wikipedia [Link to larger image]

Grand Central Station, 2009
Dan K. Allen Photos

Afternoon rush hour
Grand Central Terminal, Main Concourse
NYC Daily Pictures

Grand Central Terminal, exterior
Gothamist

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