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Grand Central still holds secrets

Grand Central Terminal turned 100 years old this year, and if “Happy Birthday” were sung, the loudest voice would be that of Brucker, unofficially Grand Central’s chief coque iphone 11 historian and officially a spokesman coque samsung a40 for the Metro coque iphone 5s livraison rapide North Railroad, whose trains begin and end their runs here. each workday to make the three hour trek by train from his New Jersey home to the place he calls “the world’s largest talent.”

That’s Brucker’s job. He joined Metro North’s public relations office 25 years ago and soon found himself researching the terminal’s history and architectural oddities in response to questions from historians, documentary filmmakers and journalists.

He was eventually anointed Grand Central’s “docent in chief,” as his business cards now read. It’s a job that, by his estimate, involves leading at least 140 VIP tours each year through the Beaux Arts behemoth in Midtown Manhattan.

At the start of each tour, Brucker stands at the center of the mobile paradise coque iphone 5 buzzing main concourse and playfully hints at the terminal’s secrets and mysteries.

“There’s coque iphone 5c pokemon go a 35,000 square foot mistake in here!” he told the 17 students and instructors from the New York School of Interior Design one recent day.

“And I bet you didn’t know that there’s coque samsung a10 a jewel hidden in plain sight in here, worth $10 [million] to $20 million,” Brucker said. “Or a secret stairway.”

He pointed at the huge board with its digital display of train departure times and track numbers. “Every single one of those is wrong!” he said, as the students looked from the dramatically gesticulating Brucker to the black board with its rows of letters and numbers.

After coque iphone 5c dentelle enticing them with these hints, he would say no more.

“Ah! But not till the end of the tour,” he said mischievously.

Then they were off. Brucker briskly zigzagged through the crowd, and the tour group strained to keep up.

Brucker’s tour groups have included ambassadors, politicians, rock stars, movie actors and TV personalities, most of whom he wouldn’t have recognized had others not pointed them out. He has no TV or coque iphone 5 dsquared computer at home and avoids the movies. His relatives are all dead, as is his beloved Maine coon cat.

In his spare time, he listens to opera on a turntable that plays his collection of vinyl albums. Brucker sees himself as a human version of Grand coque samsung a8 Central; they both revel in the past as the world swirls around at breakneck speed.

“The coque iphone 4s qui recharge terminal and I have a lot in common,” said Brucker, who has become a familiar presence to Grand Central regulars workers and commuters alike and a bit of a celebrity himself. A Japanese tourist stopped him one morning waving his camera. He wanted a picture of himself with Brucker, whom he had seen in a documentary about Grand Central.

“I coque iphone 5s tres resistante bet you didn’t know there’s an elevator here,” Brucker said as he steered the design school group up a ramp toward a lift that would take them to a floor used only by terminal workers. Unlike the Old World glamour of Grand Central’s public face, this floor was a dim industrial like maze of narrow passages and coque iphone 5s massey fergusson metal doors, one of which opened to reveal Brucker’s reason for bringing visitors here.

“Get your cameras ready!” he said before ushering them onto a glass catwalk about 110 feet above the main concourse. Tiny figures moved about the floor below like bees jostling for space in a hive.

From there, Brucker guided them to a window coque samsung j5 facing the outside and ordered them to gaze out and appreciate the coque iphone 4s pingouin view of the Chrysler Building gargoyles glistening in the sun.

The catwalk allows terminal coque iphone 5s groot workers to pass quickly from one end of the building to the other. Three stories higher are the workings of the 13 foot wide Tiffany clock that looms over 42nd Street, its golden glass sun set against a blue background and surrounded by giant white Roman numerals.

Some of Brucker’s tours stop in the “situation room,” where transit officials huddle to discuss potential emergencies. Visitors can watch the terminal’s equivalent of an air traffic control tower, where a computer screen displays lines of red, yellow, green, blue and white that represent different lines on different tracks.

Others ebay coque iphone 5c head to the public tennis courts on the fourth floor, which for 25 years housed the CBS coque iphone 4s sillicone television studios. Now, for $75 to $225 per hour, depending on the time and day, anyone can swing a racket there.

Each day, about 750,000 commuters, tourists, shoppers and diners enter Grand Central, the world’s largest train terminal, with 63 tracks, 45 platforms and coque iphone 5 ananas transparente an expanse of coque iphone 5 s noir 49 acres, from 42nd to 97th streets. Metro North operates about 700 trains daily to and from areas north of New York City.

The main concourse, with its two staircases modeled after those in the Paris Opera, covers 35,000 square feet. Its information booth fields more than 1,000 questions daily. There are 68 shops that line the grand hallways that empty into the concourse. In a far corner of the dining court, the lost and found takes in about 2,000 items a month among them a prosthetic leg, a dog and a set of dentures.

But it is its history that Brucker and the terminal’s other aficionados like to emphasize. In the 1960s, as Americans abandoned the rails in favor of cars and planes, the coque iphone 5c disney blanche neige railroad that owned Grand Central proposed building an office tower atop the rundown terminal.

“There are so many pieces of history like this, and we don’t want to lose them,” said Randall Fleischer, the vice president of Grand Central Terminal, as he stood on the original marble floor beneath chandeliers coque iphone 5s licorne claire’s dipped in liquid gold…

This entry was posted on 月曜日, 7 月 20th, 2020 at 8:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.