Grand Central
Geographic Boundaries
Grand Central is situated in Midtown Manhattan and runs between East 42nd Street and East 48th Street starting at Lexington Avenue to Madison Avenue. This area is in the center of the Grand Central Partnership Business Improvement District, which is roughly a 70-block area of Midtown. The city's zoning designations have also identified subdistricts, with the City signalling closeness to the Grand Central Terminal as well as these blocks that are making air rights transfers referencing the historic structure.
Commerce & Retail
Grand Central Terminal contains over 65 dining and retail services across its Beaux-Arts concourses. The lower level Dining Concourse has fast-casual options like Shake Shack and Magnolia Bakery. The Main Concourse has more premium options including Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant and the Grand Central Market, which is a European-style gourmet grocery store. Environs surrounding the terminal include flagship sites for international banks, high-end boutique jewelers along the periphery of East 47th Street's Diamond District, and chained outlet stores such as Apple and Warren-Tricomi Salon along East 50th Street.
Historic Landmarks
Built in 1913 to be the terminal of the New York Central Railroad, this complex replaced two previous stations originally built in 1871. The building's impressive celestial ceiling mural in the Main Concourse featuring backward constellations and the famous four-faced opal clock are still iconic attractions of the station. Also, the terminal has a unique part referred to as the Whispering Gallery, which is made up of a vaulted arcade or rooms adjacent to the Oyster Bar. The Whispering Gallery has unique acoustics that allow a whisper to travel all the way across the room and around the domed rounded corners of the edges. Grand Central achieved National Historic Landmark status in 1976 amidst preservation battles that established important precedents in urban preservation law.
Architecture
Jules- Alexis Coutan's 48-foot-wide clock with a sculptural group of Mercury, Hercules, and Minerva, adorns the terminal's Beaux-Arts facade. Skyscrapers from various eras surround the station, making the space feel less monumental and more like part of the city. The Chrysler Building holds the weight of Art Deco, constructed in 1929, and the MetLife Building towers in its modernist manner earned in 1963. More recent developments, One Vanderbilt encased in LEED-certified energy efficient glass curtain walls, were completed in 2020, and still observed the zoning height change in the district.Reference image: One Vanderbilt under construction.
Transportation Hub
Grand Central is, after Union Station in Washington, D.C., the second-busiest terminal in North America and is the endpoint of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson, and New Haven Lines. Grand Central has a connection to four lines of subway (4/5/6/7/S) through the Grand Central-42 St station. There are pedestrian tunnels connecting to the shuttle services to Times Square-Grand Central and the terminal utilizes taxi stands located on East 42nd Street. There are also Citi Bike stations located at Vanderbilt Avenue. Over 750,000 commuters pass through Grand Central daily.
Adjacent Zip Codes
The main zip code for Grand Central Terminal itself is 10017, which includes the station and the office towers right on the property. The surrounding areas of neighborhood include 10022 (to the east, toward Midtown East), 10036 (to the west-toward Times Square), and 10168 (concerning the high-rise buildings, like the MetLife).
Corporate Presence
Multinational businesses occupy glass-and-steel skyscrapers in the neighborhood, which encircle the terminal. Major tenants include investment banks (JPMorgan Chase at 383 Madison Avenue), insurance firms (MetLife at 200 Park Avenue), and law firms (Skadden Arps at 4 Times Square) as well as recent developments such as One Vanderbilt, which has both financial services and technology companies, including TD Bank's flagship NYC branch, and retail space leased to multinational companies.