Grand Central is a terminal, not a station, because trains end and turn around there, though the building on the site from 1900 to 1910 really was Grand Central Station. Cornelius Vanderbilt consolidated rail lines into Grand Central Depot in 1871, but steam smoke blinded engineers in the Park Avenue tunnel, and a 1902 crash killed 15 people. New York then banned steam locomotives in Manhattan from 1908. Railroad vice president William J. Wilgus proposed electrifying the lines and burying the yard on two levels, and from 1903 more than 10,000 workers dug out 3.2 million cubic yards of rock while 75,000 daily passengers kept moving.

The payoff was air rights: selling the space above the buried tracks created Terminal City from 42nd to 51st Street, with building columns set on lead, asbestos, and cork pads, and a 244 percent rise in area land values. Reed and Stem engineered the terminal and Warren and Wetmore gave it a Beaux-Arts triumphal arch facade, the Glory of Commerce sculpture, and a 35,000 square foot concourse with ramps to keep crowds flowing. Hidden spaces include the Vanderbilt Tennis Club, once an indoor ski slope, and the M42 power station about 100 feet down. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis led the fight to save it in the 1970s.

• 44 platforms and 67 tracks, more platforms than any other rail facility
• The slice-by-slice excavation that kept trains running over temporary structures
• Moving M42’s rotary converters for the Waldorf Astoria without cutting power
• Track 61 and the baggage car wrongly said to be FDR’s armored train
• A lost and found that collects over 15,000 items a year, including false teeth