Grand Central is so many things a once; transit hub, hangout, mall, grocery store, restaurant, destination, point of departure, and most importantly it is an iconic public space. It is hard to imagine that a place with so much happening at once can evoke calm and be an uplifting experience. This magic happens from the design, sounds, art, function and scale of the place.

At Grand Central you can find a good example of the infamous Guastavino tile designed vaulted ceilings.

Inside the Met Life building you can spot the Richard Lippold sculpture, “Flight”, which give you a flashback to the era of PanAm. Lippold was famous for using a web of wires in gold and silver to create geometric forms. The material of “Flight” calibrates between contrasts from daylight and artificial light.

Some parts of Grand Central are kept in its original context, but is nowadays rather obsolete. One thing that caught my eye was the old letter box that was shining in gold. Even though it’s in gold it camouflages well with the texture of the wall. It’s a nice touch to see it still be there since it gives me a sense of how it was in the older days. 

In Grand Central time is key, and they certainly make sure that their travelers are able to keep up with it. In Grand Central I could find 8 different versions of clock, scattered out in various places.

Since Grand Central has been around for a long while you would imagine that there would be much wear and tear to observe. However, it was actually hard to find some evidence of this building being over 140 years old. I found this stair step that has been kept in its original material, but have only seen this little wear and tear in over 140 years. It think that it is something to think about in what quality we have in mind when we make things nowadays.