Grand Central is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York metropolitan area.

[13][14] The CSX Corporation Railroad Dictionary also considers "terminals" as facilities "for the breaking up, making up, forwarding, and servicing of trains" or "where one or more rail yards exist".

This configuration, devised by New York Central vice president William J. Wilgus, separated intercity and commuter-rail passengers, smoothing the flow of people in and through the station.

[38][39][40] In their design for the station's interior, Reed & Stem created a circulation system that allowed passengers alighting from trains to enter the Main Concourse, then leave through various passages that branch from it.

The first two vaults, as viewed from leaving Grand Central, are painted with cumulus clouds, while the third contains a 1927 mural by Edward Trumbull depicting American transportation.

[59] Dubbed the North End Access Project, the work was to be completed in 1997 at a cost of $64.5 million,[65] but it was slowed by the incomplete nature of the building's original blueprints and by previously undiscovered groundwater beneath East 45th Street.

The tympanum has sculpted bronze garlands and a caduceus below an inscripted panel that reads: "To all those with head, heart, and hand • Toiled in the construction of this monument to the public service • This is inscribed."

[77] In 2014, the foyer was named for Onassis, former First Lady of the United States, who in the 1970s helped ward off the demolition of the Main Concourse and the construction of Grand Central Tower.

[87] In 2016, the men's room was renovated into Agern, an 85-seat Nordic-themed fine dining and Michelin-starred restaurant operated by Noma co-founder Claus Meyer,[91] who also ran the food hall.

[97][99] In 2015, the MTA awarded a contract to refurbish the Biltmore Room into an arrival area for Long Island Rail Road passengers as part of the East Side Access project.

[100] As part of the project, the room's booths and stands were replaced by a pair of escalators and an elevator to Grand Central Madison's deep-level concourse,[97][99] which opened in May 2023.

[103][104] Opened in 1937 with 25-cent admission, the theater showed short films, cartoons, and newsreels[105] from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.[106][107] Designed by Tony Sarg, it had 242 stadium-style seats and a standing-room section with armchairs.

[14][57] Some of the more unusual items collected by the bureau include fake teeth, prosthetic body parts, legal documents, diamond pouches, live animals, and a $100,000 violin.

[132] Broadcasts were transmitted from an antenna atop the nearby Chrysler Building installed by order of CBS chief executive William S. Paley,[130][131] and were also shown on a large screen in the Main Concourse.

[128][129][133][134] Founded by Geza A. Gazdag, an athlete and Olympic coach who fled Hungary amid its 1956 revolution,[135] its two tennis courts were once deemed the most expensive place to play the game—$58 an hour—until financial recessions forced the club to lower the hourly fee to $40.

The railcar's location near Roosevelt's Track 61 led former tour guide Dan Brucker and others to falsely claim that this was the president's personal train car used for transporting his limousine.

[148] Tracks 116–125 were demolished to make room for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) concourse constructed underneath the Metro-North station as part of the East Side Access project.

[188] Today, it contains about 3,000 books, newspapers, films, photographs, and other documents about railroads, along with artifacts, including part of a 20th Century Limited red carpet.

[194][195][196] Various elements inside the terminal were designed by French architects and artists Jules-Félix Coutan, Sylvain Salières, and Paul César Helleu.

At the top of the south facade is an elaborate entablature featuring a 13-foot-wide (4.0 m) clock[220] set in the middle of a round broken pediment,[213] flanked by overflowing cornucopias.

[294][295][296] The new electric service led to increased development in New York City's suburbs, and passenger traffic on the commuter lines into Grand Central more than doubled in the seven years following the terminal's completion.

A year after it opened, the galleries established the Grand Central School of Art, which occupied 7,000 square feet (650 m2) on the seventh floor of the east wing of the terminal.

Amtrak, the national rail system formed in 1971, ran its last train from Grand Central on April 6, 1991, upon the completion of the Empire Connection on Manhattan's West Side.

[332][333] The MTA awarded contracts to replace the display boards and public announcement systems and add security cameras at Grand Central Terminal in December 2017.

[336][337] In September 2020, the skyscraper One Vanderbilt opened, along with a train hall at its base, a pedestrian plaza connecting it to the terminal, and an underground passage to the complex's subway station.

[204] Brochures advertised the new Grand Central Terminal as a tourist-friendly space where "[t]imid travelers may ask questions with no fear of being rebuffed by hurrying trainmen, or imposed upon by hotel runners, chauffeurs or others in blue uniforms"; a safe and welcoming place for people of all cultures, where "special accommodations are to be provided for immigrants and gangs of laborers"; and a general tourist attraction "where one delights to loiter, admiring its beauty and symmetrical lines—a poem in stone".

[360] Development slowed drastically during the Great Depression,[356] and part of Terminal City was gradually demolished or reconstructed with steel-and-glass designs after World War II.

[363][364] The partnership has also funded some restoration projects around the terminal, including installation of lamps to illuminate its facade and purchase of a streetlamp that used to stand on the Park Avenue Viaduct.

Until 2007, the fire brigade was made up of volunteer Metro-North employees who received firefighting and emergency medical certification and would answer calls while on the clock for the railroad.

[14][392] Grand Central Terminal's architecture, including its Main Concourse clock, are depicted on the stage of Saturday Night Live, a long-running NBC television show.