Hello all!
Last night after I posted, Alisha, Shannon and I walked to downtown Brooklyn and had Mexican for dinner at a place called 'Chavela's'. The food was amazing and we cashed in on the happy hour drinks, ordering two each at once (or three in Shannon's case!). The waitress thought that was hilarious!!
Today we headed off in the rain towards our first stop of the day, the Chrysler Building. We warmed up at Starbucks along the way, then headed in. Built by the architect William Van Alen in 1930, this building is 1046 feet tall and was built for the Chrysler automobile company. It is an Art Deco building, and in true Art Deco fashion the buildings from this era have characteristics on their exterior that pertain to their function. So the Chrysler building has hood ornaments from cars as gargoyles, the paramount films building has stars etc.
The public can only access the foyer, which had a beautiful Christmas tree and the ceiling is covered in a gorgeous mural.
After this, we went and ticked off another typical thing to do in America - eat McDonald's. Personally I was underwhelmed, the meal size was exactly the same and my cheeseburger was cold. Don't think I will be eating there again, though I wasn't expecting much!
Our next stop was Grand Central Terminal, where we had a look around and then joined our 75 minute guided tour. Our guide's name was Steve who was a volunteer, and you could instantly tell he was very passionate about the building and its history. We were really taken aback by the main concourse with its beautiful marble features and the sea green ceiling.
The station is called Grand Central Terminal because trains terminate there (though the subway runs through underground too). The building opened in 1913. The ceiling that we were so impressed with shows the signs of the zodiac, and before 1998 this was all covered with black soot and gunk due to years of exposure to cigarette smoke and car fumes. They left one brick like this to compare after they cleaned it (see photos below).
Steve spoke of the "bad old days" for Grand Central, during which New Yorkers referred to it as a 'covered times square' (Times Square used to be dodgy and horrible back in the day). There were huge ads up in this time, a betting agency inside the main concourse and it was overall gaudy and tacky. Thankfully that was fixed a bit later on.
In the 60s, the original Penn Station was knocked down due to no money being available to keep up preservation costs. Apparently Penn was even more beautiful than Grand Central, so this stirred up public outcry and with the help of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her passion for saving old buildings, it was saved. Thankfully it was saved as is, because PanAm offered to fund the unkept if they could build a 55 storey building on top. Yuck! The Municipal Art Society managed to get a protection act passed in 1965 that helped to save future buildings also.
Grand Central is a beautiful 'Beaux Arts' style of architecture, which means there are lots of very decadent ornamental pieces around the station.
A man named Commodore Vanderbilt (as he was nicknamed), grew up poor in Staten Island and became rich throughout his life via his boat and train companies. He created the original building on the site of today's Grand Central, which was later rebuilt to today's version by his son William. There are lots of acorns decorating Grand Central and this is due to the Vanderbilt family motto being "great oaks from little acorns grow". Today there are many buildings around the city that the Vanderbilts are responsible for building, they were a very rich family.
We continued walking to different parts of the station just as 600,000-900,000 people do per day. My favourite part was the Whispering Gallery, where you stand on the opposite side of the room to each other and the curved roof carries the sound and means you can hear what they are saying as if they are right next to you. I had a conversation with Alisha!
Our tour ended in the station and we had just over an hour until our next one began in the same place. We sat in the main concourse and decided to people watch. I then suggested we pass the time by writing down as many of the 50 US states as possible. We sat there for a while thinking of as many as we could and then went downstairs to the food court. In the process, a man overheard us and checked our list. We had written Cleveland and New England as states which he said weren't right, but other than that he was impressed. Once back upstairs after thinking of a few more, we had 49 out of 50. We racked our brains but couldn't think of the 50th and eventually conceded and looked it. Montana was the only state we couldn't think of (apologies Montana!). I'm very proud of our effort!
The only negative part of our people watching session was when a lady left four bags unattended next to us and walked off. There are ads everywhere here telling you to report if this happens. So Alisha did, and the cops did nothing! But nothing happened so all was ok!
Then we joined our tour of Midtown with the same company as the free tour the other day - Sandemans New Europe. We were pleased to have Zev as our guide again! It was only the four of us and two guys from Singapore on the tour.
We started inside Grand Central and once again had a great couple of hours with Zev learning interesting facts we wouldn't have known otherwise. It did rain a bit but we were fairly lucky overall. The reason railway expansions happened so quickly once they started here is because the distance from LA to New York is the same as London to Baghdad. How crazy is that!!
We walked past the New York public library and Bryant Park behind it with its beautiful ice skating rink. Here Zev told us that the Empire State Building observation deck came about because it opened smack in the middle of the Great Depression and remained 35% empty in terms of offices for a few years. The building made $1 million from the observation deck in its first year which kept it afloat during this hard time.
We got to Times Square and found out it got its name because the Herald newspaper had Herald Square named after it, and the Times got jealous and wanted the same. They purchased the building the New Year's Eve ball now sits on top of in order to achieve this, and have left it mainly empty but make a huge profit from the advertisements displayed all over it.
The ball drop tradition began in 1984 when the city brainstormed what it could do instead of letting fireworks off from the top of this building which would have been a massive fire hazard. One million people per year gather in Times Square to watch the ball drop, standing in the cold and unable to go to the toilet. We've booked a party in a building off the square, I'm a bit nervous about the crowds but at least we will be warm and have bathrooms available!! Apparently two million turned out in 1999/2000 due to the Y2K craze.
We walked through Broadway past various theatres, then onto the Rockefeller area and ended up near the 21 Club, a speakeasy that apparently a lot of celebrities flock to to this day. There were jockey statues out the front that apparently rich bar frequenters purchased to display their jockey's banners of the horse they owned. This is how New York earned its title "The Big Apple", it was associated with a horse race and the name stuck to the city itself.
Our tour ended outside St Patrick's Cathedral, a huge Catholic Church built in response to the huge numbers of Irish immigrants that came to New York. We passed anoth film location from 'Gossip Girl' - the New York Palace Hotel. Cold and hungry, we got the subway back to Brooklyn. It's now Alisha's Mum's birthday I'm Australia so we stopped and used the good wifi at the station to sing her happy birthday via video call. We got quite a few funny looks!!
I ate my leftover pizza for dinner. Now we are sitting down to watch some 'How I Met Your Mother' - one of my all time favourite TV shows that's set in New York.
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
