The Story of How Jackie Kennedy Saved New York’s Grand Central Station

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Before she was an iconic First Lady of the United States, Jackie Kennedy was a born and raised New Yorker. By 1975, when she settled full-time back into Manhattan, Grand Central Station seemed doomed. Its owners, the Penn Central Railroad, had some grand plans. A decade earlier, Penn Central had demolished Penn Station, replacing its fabulous wrought-iron concourse with a cramped terminal squashed beneath the newly built Madison Square Garden. Here to tell the story is Natasha Wing. Natasha’s best known for her The Night Before children’s series. She’s here to share this story from her book, How Jackie Saved Grand Central. Here’s Natasha with the story.

00:01:07
Speaker 2: I was traveling in Paris, and I believe it was 2005, and I remember going to the Musée d’Orsay, and I had discovered that it once used to be a train station, and at one point it became a museum—an art museum. But it’s because the building was going to be demolished, so the people rose up and said, “You are not going to demolish this building. We’re going to save it,” and it finally became an art museum. So when I got back from my trip from Paris, I talked to my agent, and I mentioned the Musée d’Orsay, and she said, “Well, that’s interesting, because did you know that Grand Central Terminal was set to be demolished? But Jackie Kennedy Onassis stepped in and helped save it.” And I grew up in Connecticut. I live in Colorado now, but so we would go into New York City, and you know, it’s just part of the architecture, part of the flavor of being in the city. And I never associated it with a former First Lady. But in the Grand Central Terminal, I did come across the plaque, and I’ll read it to you: “In memory and honor of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In an age when few people sought to preserve the architectural wonders that are a daily reminder of our rich and glorious past, a brave woman rose in protest to save this terminal from demolition. Because of her tireless and valiant efforts, it stands today as a monument to those who came before us and built the greatest city known to mankind. Preserving this great landmark is one of her many enduring legacies. The people of New York City are forever grateful.” And I saw that, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I have to write this story because billions of people probably passed by this little plaque every day and didn’t even connect that she was involved in saving this wonderful building.” So just a little bit of background about Grand Central. It was one of the largest and grandest railroad terminals in the world, and it opened in 1913, and I’m going to read an excerpt: “Some called it a work of art with its pink marble steps, majestic sculptures, dazzling chandeliers, towering windows, and cerulean vaulted ceiling painted with gold-leaf constellations.” So it was the hub of people coming in and out of the city. It took ten years to build and cost $65 million. So in the 1940s, which was the peak of train tracks, 65 million passengers came in and out of New York City every year via the trains. So not only did Grand Central Terminal act as a way to get people in and out of the city, it was also a big community gathering spot. And so this is where politicians made, you know, important speeches. This is where they would close it down and have New Year’s Eve dances, and artist Andy Warhol actually threw an underground party there. And there have been movies filmed there, like probably the most memorable one was North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant was in that one. The Cotton Club by Francis Coppola was filmed there, and The Fisher King. So again, it was another example of this wasn’t just a train station. This was a community center, and it was almost like having a miniature village within a city. So there was another station that was actually considered even more beautiful than Grand Central Terminal, and it was Penn Station. And Penn Station was also built in the Beaux-Arts style. It was considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest architectural works in New York City. In 1963, it was demolished, and people were just shocked. They were kind of caught off by surprise by the developers. They ended up building, well, now today is Madison Square Garden. And then when they heard that Grand Central Terminal was going to suffer from the same, they rose up and said, “Oh no, this is not going to happen twice.” So in 1975 is when the Committee to Save Grand Central was formed, and shortly after is when Jackie O became involved in it. So I believe you have a recording of Jackie’s speech she gave January 30th, 1975, in Grand Central Terminal, to plea for saving the building. So take a listen.

00:06:10
Speaker 3: I think if we don’t care about our past, we can’t have very much hope for our future. And we’ve all heard that it’s too late, or that it has to happen, or that it’s inevitable. But I don’t think that’s true, because I think if there is a great effort, even if it’s at the eleventh hour, you can succeed. And I think, and I know, that that’s what we’ll do.

00:06:32
Speaker 2: Truly. It started when she was in the White House, and when she became a First Lady in 1961, she and President John F. Kennedy and their children moved into the White House. So she looked around, and the walls needed painting, the furniture was all shabby, and she also was like, “Well, where are all the mementos of all the presidents that came before us?” So she took it upon herself to renovate the White House, because it is the people’s home, essentially, so she wanted to make it a place that Americans could be proud of and then also visit and learn a little bit about the past presidents.

00:07:11
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Natasha Wing tell the story of how Jackie Kennedy Onassis saved Grand Central, and what a save it was. When we come back, more of Natasha Wing, the story of how Jackie Kennedy Onassis saved Grand Central. Here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little. Give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we return to Our American Stories and the story of how Jackie Kennedy Onassis has saved Grand Central. Let’s continue with Natasha Wing. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

00:08:23
Speaker 2: So what she did is she went down into the basement of the White House and dragged up furniture. Like a history detective, Jackie tracked down lost presidential treasures: the desk used by Rutherford B. Hayes, candelabras purchased by James Monroe, a chandelier bought by Ulysses S. Grant. Room by room, she restored the dreary mansion into a stately home that made Americans proud. She was really meticulous about the details and then working with designers to get the house back up to a very present home that Americans could be proud of. So Jackie led preservation efforts beyond the walls of the White House, too. When the neighborhood across the street from the presidential residence was set for destruction to make way for modern court and office buildings, Jackie persuaded the developers to stop. She used her position as First Lady to get the plans changed. Old buildings were preserved rather than torn down, and new buildings were built to match the original architectural style. The restoration of the White House and the neighborhood of Lafayette Square led to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which helps develop national heritage treasures. In 1970, Lafayette Square became a National Historic Landmark. So a lot of the challenges with this story were trying to figure out how to make a building interesting, and I knew. So that’s what the Committee to Save Grand Central Terminal was feeling like. They were looking at this as something more than just a building to save. It was history, it was people, it was transportation. It was a community gathering place. It was a place you could shop and meet your friends for lunch. And what it actually represented to people of New York City and actually people around the world. If you think about it, it’s called, you know, the gateway to the city that never sleeps, but it’s also a gateway to the United States. A lot of people fly into New York City, or they take the train or subway into Grand Central Terminal, and then they go from there to discover America. So it is a gateway. It started off as a court case that was set in New York City, and not many people knew about what was going on, you know, with the wanting to build a skyscraper or demolish Grand Central Terminal as far as Americans; so, it was more like a New York City story. When Jackie read about the demolition on the front page of the newspaper, she was like, “Oh, no, this is not going to happen. I am going to get involved.” And once she became involved and put out a plea to Americans to help save the building, they would mail in five-dollar checks or one-dollar checks, anything to help. And it kind of became America’s fight, too, because, like I said, it was a gateway to America, and everybody knows what this Grand Central Terminal is. And so it then elevated the fight to the Americans want to save this, not just New York City residents. So this case went back and forth, and so at one point Jackie was desperate. She was a very good writer. She sat down, and I found this letter she wrote to the mayor, Mayor Beam, the Mayor of New York City, and it’s really, for me, it was like a chill moment to see her handwriting, because it wasn’t a typed letter. It was she sat down at her desk and wrote it out by hand. And so she wrote: “I write to you about Grand Central Station with a prayer that you will see fit to have the City of New York appeal Judge Palus’s decision. Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud moments until there will be nothing left of her history and beauty to inspire our children? If they are not inspired by the past of our city, where will they find the strength to fight for her future? Americans care about their past, but for short-term gain, they ignore it and tear down everything that matters.” And this is a court case that the interesting thing about it is it went. It ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court, and it was the first case that was about historic present, and that’s why everybody was holding their breath. Like Jackie, she was super nervous about which way this was going to go, because we all know the Supreme Court is pretty much the final word. So in 1978, it was a six-to-three ruling in favor of saving Grand Central Terminal, and that’s how the preservationists looked at it. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, now we have the ability to save buildings that we have in our own cities because of Jackie!” So after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the preservation group to save Grand Central Terminal, then that’s when the work began. Because what was left of years of neglect was: the ceilings were just covered in soot. Smoke from the trains would come up and get stuck on the ceiling. More people smoked back then, so there was a lot of cigarette smoke. And during World War II, they blacked out the windows, so if planes flew overhead, they wouldn’t identify the building and bomb it. So windows were blacked out, and really ugly advertisements were set up all over the place, so they were covering, you know, the beautiful details of the woodwork and the marble and the walls and everything. And then the homeless were starting to take over and sleep in there, and it was just not a really pleasant place to visit, and people felt if they had to go there, they would try to get through there as quickly as possible. And then when the restoration started, Jackie also was involved in that, and she helped the architects who were working on it look at original drawings and photos of the building when it was in its glory, and so their intention was to try to restore it as much as they could back to its initial glory. So it took about $200 million and a team of craftsmen to get the work done, and it took about two decades before they could make the place shine again. So it was not until 1998 that it was rededicated. But during the restoration period, in order to convince the people of New York City that it was worth putting all this money into restoring this building, they just cleaned a small little square of the ceiling, and suddenly people could see that beautiful blue underneath, and they were like, “Wow, I didn’t even know that was there.” You couldn’t see; there were golden constellations painted up on the ceiling. And the funny thing about that is they’re actually backwards. So the artists who did the constellation artwork on the ceiling had it backwards. So the way they explained it was, it says, if you’re looking at the constellations, if you’re way out in the solar system and looking down at the constellations, maybe like a god’s-eye view of the constellations. So that was their kind of excuse of why they’re backwards. So it was a big deal. In 1998, when it was rededicated, most New Yorkers had never seen Grand Central looking so glorious, and it was time to celebrate. Yet one person was missing. Jackie had died four years earlier. Many people honored her memory by visiting Grand Central to write messages in memorial books and linger in the beautiful space she had helped preserve.

00:16:37
Speaker 1: A terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to Natasha Wing. She’s the author of the well-known and best-selling children’s series, The Night Before, and she’s also the author of How Jackie Saved Grand Central, the true story of Jacqueline Kennedy’s fight for an American icon. And Praise God, she fought for this beautiful space in one of our great American cities. If we don’t care about our past, we won’t care about our future. And then, of course, what she did, that letter to the mayor, just how beautiful. And in the end, using all of her credibility and her popularity, and in 1998, it was saved: $200 million, two decades worth of work, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis never got to see it. She died in 1994, but her work and her efforts live on. And by the way, we try to do the same thing Jackie O did right here with this show, preserving the good and beautiful things in life so we can remember who we were. The story of Jackie Kennedy and how she saved Grand Central here on Our American Stories.