“Rails to the Metropolis” at the New York State Museum

Abstract

“RAILS TO THE METROPOLIS” AT THE NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM BRIAN J. CUDAHY Albany, New York, is a capital city overshadowed in many ways by the state’s principal metropolis 150 miles downriver. But in recent years it has started to feel comfortable with its role as the capital of a state whose affairs are often so totally dominated by New York City. The New York State Museum is an excellent reflection of this new confidence. Founded in 1936, it now occupies a prime location in the vast Empire State Plaza, a collection of public buildings built to world capital proportions during the administration of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The museum is in the Cultural Education Center, also headquarters of the state’s Department of Education, and home of archival materials that continually draw scholars from near and far. “Rails to the Metropolis” is a new permanent exhibit in an area of the museum dedicated primarily to affairs of New York City but also evoking recollections that people from the state’s other major cities will find familar. (A collection of beautifully restored fire engines, e.g., traces the evolution of that always-interesting industrial art form.) “Rails to the Metropolis” proceeds sequentially along a wall and in­ cludes treatments of three major railroads that helped to develop New York City: the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, and the Long Island. Glass cases contain period and contemporary graphic material as well as very nicely executed models of various pieces of railroad equipment that together communicate a sense of the growth of New York railroading. The wall leads to the exhibit’s principal attraction, a large model of Grand Central Terminal. Bear with me, please, about Grand Cen­ tral. I was raised in New York and had occasion to visit Grand Central’s marvelous spaces and corridors from time to time, sometimes as a prelude to a train ride, more often simply in passage from a subway Mr. Cudahy works for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Urban Mass Trans­ portation Administration in Washington, D.C., and has written widely on urban trans­ portation matters. His latest book, Over and Back: The History of Ferryboating in New York Harbor will be published by Fordham University Press, and a revised second edition of his book on New York subways, Under the Sidewalks ofNew York, is scheduled for publication.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2902-0008$01.00 276 “Rails to the Metropolis” at the New York State Museum 277 station to some nearby address. But as much as Grand Central fills one’s senses with multiple sights and sounds and feelings, when it comes to the railroad trains that are its raison d’être, the impression this terminal always created was mystery. You couldn’t see them. Or hear them. Or know when they arrived or departed, except by the testimony of others. Oh, you could sometimes catch a fast look through the gates at the observation car on the tail end ofthe Twentieth Century Limited before it made its departure at 6:00 p.m. (A piece of the famous “red carpet” that was nightly laid out along the platform of this most fa­ mous of American trains is preserved in the exhibit.) But more than any other train station I have ever known, in big city or small, Grand Central meant mystery. (Let me offer assurances that this sense of mystery is not the product merely of boyhood remembrances. To visit the New York State Museum in June of 1987 I traveled north by train from Grand Central, and while the cars are now lettered Amtrak and the curtain signs on the various departure tracks have been replaced by a new electronic system, the old mood is still there.) The model of Grand Central helps unveil some of this mystery in a way that photographs and diagrams never can. It is built to a scale of 1/8 inch = 1 foot, measures over 8 feet in its longest dimension, and thanks to its cutaway construction allows one to see perspectives and relationships that cannot be achieved in the real Grand...