The title, as a foretaste of Smart's poetic techniques, uses metre (it is largely anapaestic), contains words denoting exalted or intensified states (grandeur, centrality, weeping), and alludes to Psalm 137 ("By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept ...") which indicates metaphorical significance for the novel's subject matter.

In an essay for Open Letters Monthly, Ingrid Norton stated "the power of emotion to transform one’s perspective on the world is the theme of this wildly poetic novel", calling it "a howl of a book, shot through with vivid imagery and ecstatic language, alternately exasperating and invigorating".

At that time the novelist Angela Carter praised the novel in a Guardian review as “like Madame Bovary blasted by lightning” but later wrote privately to her friend, the critic Lorna Sage, that it inspired her to found the feminist publisher Virago Press, from "the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to be able to write BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I SAT DOWN AND WEPT, exquisite prose though it might contain.

[3] Excerpts from the novel, and other of the author's writings, feature in Elizabeth Smart: On The Side of the Angels (1991), an hour-long documentary of the writer, written and directed by Maya Gallus.

The title was adapted by Ashley Hutchings for his album By Gloucester Docks I Sat Down and Wept, which includes the track "Love, Stuff and Nonsense", credited as Smart's work.

[4][5] Chamber pop duo, Heavy Bell (made up of Matt Peters and Tom Keenan) released an album titled By Grand Central Station (2018), which they called "a paean to the novel: a song of praise and triumph".