The dramatic story of how New Yorkers saved Grand Central Terminal and established the precedent for preserving urban landmarks. No Ordinary Landmark tells the legal story of how Grand Central Terminal became a landmark. This is the fascinating, littleknown history of the railroad company that owned Grand Central, the architects and engineers who built it, the city that supported it, and the lawsuit that saved it. The cast of characters is immense: some familiar, like Mayor Robert Wagner and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and some now obscure, like Albert Bard, father of the New York Landmarks Law. Railroad moguls, real estate barons, politicians, arts experts, and above all lawyers and judges all played vital roles. It is a story of landmark law at a critical moment in its existence and what property owners ultimately do with their assets. Finally, this is the story of one of the greatest cities in the world, in microcosm. Opened in 1913, Grand Central Terminal (GCT) became a costly luxury for the New York Central Railroad in the postwar years, as the rise of automobile culture and interstate highway systems led to a precipitous decline in railroad use. In the 1950s, proposals were put forward to replace GCT with more lucrative buildings, including the massive Pei Tower. This led Bard in 1954 to draft an act for New York State to recognize landmarks, the Historic Preservation Enabling Act. It was passed by the legislature and signed into law in 1956, though it was not used to create the New York City Landmarks Law until 1965-by which time Pennsylvania Station had been demolished to make way for the fourth, and current, iteration of Madison Square Garden. Immediately after the landmark designation for GCT became official in 1967, New York Central Railroad merged with Pennsylvania Railroad to form Penn Central, and the new company proposed to demolish GCT the way it had Pennsylvania Station. When New York refused to consider the plans, Penn Central sued the city, thus paving way for the legal battle that the Supreme Court finally decided in 1978. Louis Hull Hoffer sheds new light on the suit between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the City of New York, showing how this iconic legal battle pit two core values of American jurisprudence against one another: the absolute right of property owners over their property and the public's interest in shared urban spaces. While the tension between these values persists today, Penn Central v. New York City created a new legal framework for a generation of jurists, planners, preservationists, and legal scholars.
Louis Hull Hoffer is an independent scholar. He has worked in community development in New Jersey and New York.
Series Foreword Introduction 1. The Railroad City 2. Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station 3. The Terminal in Post-World War II New York City 4. Landmark Law 5. Landmark Status for Grand Central Terminal 6. Penn Central Strikes Back 7. Appeals in the New York State Courts 8. Briefs and Oral Argument in the US Supreme Court 9. The High Court Decides 10. The Terminal After Penn Central Conclusion Chronology Bibliographic Essay Index
"A deeply researched yet engagingly written history not only of Grand Central Terminal and the fight for its preservation, but of the railroads and their connection and contribution to the rise of Manhattan, as well as the brilliant innovations that made the Terminal such a magnificent landmark in its day. Spurred by the tragic destruction of the famed Penn Station in the early 1960s and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's well-known devotion to historic preservation, the author also recounts the great legal battles that insured not only the Terminal's protection but other historic buildings throughout the country. A fascinating account of a landmark in danger and its amazing survival as a national model and monument to the human ability to solve technological challenges in a most enduringly beautiful way."-Suzanne Hinman, author of The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, and Architecture in Gilded Age New York "Thriving cities are always reinventing themselves, but their continued prosperity depends on balancing public goods with private interests. Louis Hull Hoffer's fascinating account of the battle over Grand Central Terminal illustrates how New York City-the same city that permitted the old Penn Station to be destroyed-can also get it right."-Salo Coslovsky, Associate Professor at NYU-Wagner "Louis Hull Hoffer's No Ordinary Landmark is no ordinary book. Across ten highly readable chapters Hoffer provides a sweeping account of the construction as well as the near demolition of New York's famed Grand Central Station. For those interested in the history of New York, the history of preservation law, or the history of one of New York's most beautiful buildings, this exquisitely rendered book is a must."-Kafui Attoh, Associate Professor, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, coauthor of Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City "Louis Hull Hoffer takes readers on a captivating historical journey through the making of Grand Central Terminal, revealing the many ways in which people, politics, and the power of the courts converged to preserve one of New York City's most treasured landmarks. No Ordinary Landmark is a must-read for anyone interested in urban governance, community development, and the evolution of land use planning in America."-Yolande A. Cadore, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University
