Engineered to move people with beauty

New York instantly fell in love with Grand Central Terminal when it opened in 1913. More than a half million people a day cross its floors. (Envision/corbis)

Legions of us will never forget our first time at Grand Central: The rise from the train in the bowels of the earth, up through the low-ceilinged passages, and out into the shock and the awe of the Main Concourse.

It is in the Main Concourse, jaws agape, that you know you are at the center of the known world. You are humbled and seduced but never intimidated. That is the genius of this vast public space.

Martin Scorsese caught the same kind of lift in "Goodfellas," where a mob couple enters the basement of the old Copacabana, passes through its kitchens and up into the glitter and glare of the nightclub.

Michael Epstein captures the magic of the building and its wild history in "Grand Central," a compact documentary he wrote and produced that airs on WGBH tonight. The history is a good yarn, but what continues to slay us are the iconic photos of this American beauty.

The camera has always had a love affair with Grand Central: The light shafting down from its high windows to the floor. The individual standing alone amid the flow. Commuters enjoying serial libations at the bar on the West Balcony before facing the ride home to Larchmont and Rye. The four-sided gold clock above the information island - the one we mean when we say, "I'll meet you at the clock."

What makes Grand Central Terminal (not "station") is its sublime mix of function and form. It is, first and foremost, a huge train station that efficiently moves more than half a million people across its floors in and out of New York every day. Its reason for being must never be lost to the beauty of this Beaux Arts confection.

Its history is a doozy, and Epstein does the best he can to tell it with old photographs, old film, and the informed on-air opinions of several historians.

Cornelius Vanderbilt bought land between East 42nd and 47th streets and built the original Grand Central that opened in 1871. This brought the three railroad lines he owned together. (Vanderbilt had a monopoly on all trains in and out of New York City until the Pennsylvania Railroad opened the original Pennsylvania Station, an even larger Beaux Arts jewel, in 1910.)

Vanderbilt made a fortune by subjecting New Yorkers to years of appalling cinder, smoke, and noise as the trains ran relentlessly at street level, day and night, through the city. It was unbearable, and steam engines were eventually banned in the city, opening the era of the electric train.

But where to put all his trains and track? Vanderbilt had run out of land. Enter William Wilgus, another of those American engineers who helped shape this country. (John Roebling, chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, and George Goethals, chief engineer of the Panama Canal, were two others.)

Wilgus, who was chief engineer of Vanderbilt's New York Central Railroad, came up with the ingenious idea of putting the station deep underground. Even more revolutionary, he devised a way to pay for this expensive undertaking: real estate. He first grasped the value of leasing development rights above ground. Exhibit A: Park Avenue.

The Grand Central we know today was designed largely by a New York aristocrat, Whitney Warren, whose firm partnered with another, Reed & Stem. It was Warren who mixed majesty with intimacy to great effect.

New York fell in love with the new Grand Central instantly. Over 150,000 people poured into it the day it opened in 1913. It has survived near-extinction, thanks to people like Jackie Onassis who fought to save the building from the predations of developers who wanted to exchange it for a big skyscraper.

The meaning of Grand Central Terminal is lost in a love story. Epstein understands this. We look up at the blue celestial mural covering the ceiling and swoon.

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com