Grand Central Station. Grand Central Terminal. Yeah, So?

Refer to a place where the trains come in and out of on 42nd Street and Park Avenue as Grand Central Station often enough and it shouldn't be long before a wise-ass New Yorker smugly tells you; "Grand Central Station is the Post Office on Lexington Avenue. The train place is Grand Central Terminal."

"Yeah, why should I care what you call the place where the trains are?"

"And I'm telling you that's Grand Central Terminal.  Go to Grand Central Station and all you'll find is mail."

"You mean, if I'm somewhere in Manhattan and I ask the cabbie to take me to Grand Central Station they're going to take me to the post office?"

"Get in a cab in Manhattan and you'll never know where you might wind up."

"That's crazy."

"Just last week on Jeopardy a woman provided the answer as Grand Central Station, then quickly amended it to Grand Central Terminal. It didn't matter, since neither one was the right answer. But it shows you how once corrected people become about what to call the train place, they remember that it's correctly called Grand Central Terminal."

"Okay, oh Great One, what's the difference? Why isn't the train place called Grand Central Station like Penn Station is called Station? No one calls Penn Station Penn Terminal and find themselves corrected to call it Penn Station?"

"I'm glad you asked. Do you know who Sam Roberts is.?"

"A wise-ass New Yorker like you?"

"I'm not sure about the wise-ass part, but he's a senior reporter for the New York Times who writes about the city. He's written lots of books. He also write obituaries."

"Yeah, all those reporters write books."

"Well, Mr. Robert has recently published a book called: The New Yorkers: 31 Remarkable People, 400 Years and the Untold Biography of the World's Greatest City."

"Typical New Yorker. Always telling whomever the place is the greatest city. How many have they ever visited?"

"I sense hostility. Anyway, one of the 31 Remarkable People Mr. Roberts give us a short bio sketch of is William J. Wilgus: The Making of Midtown."

"I'm supposed to know this guy? Did you ever hear about the guy?"

"No, but that's not the point. Lots of the people in Mr. Roberts's book are hardly household names, but they span the period of time from when the city was founded to the near present day. They generally are not people you ever heard of, but what they did shaped the city in many permanent ways."

"Okay, so what did William J. Wilgus do that has anything to do with Grand Central Terminal."

"I'm glad you asked. Mr. Wilgus in 1901 was instrumental in getting the train depot built so that the trains could come in and out of the city on underground tracks—electrified trains—and not belch stream and smoke at street level. Did you know Grand Central is serviced by 52 tracks on two levels, Upper and Lower?"

"No."

"And until I read Mr. Roberts book I never knew the distinction between Terminal and Station." A long time ago I was likewise corrected that it's called Grand Central Terminal, but I never knew why the word Terminal made such a difference over calling it a station."

"Something you didn't know?"

"Yes, Mr. Roberts almost parenthetically tells us it's Grand Central Terminal because the tracks only start and end there. Terminal. You can't go any further. The end, or the beginning of the line, depending on the direction you're going; north leaving the station; south coming into the station.

"Whereas Penn Station you can go in any direction from there, north, south, east or west depending on the line you take. Therefore, it's a station."

"This has been enlightening."

"Do you think you'll now correctly call the place where the trains are Grand Central Terminal?"

"You're a first-rate pain-in-the-ass."

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