Few locations in the world offer the opportunity to communicate between major edifices several blocks apart without going outside, and fewer still between buildings of grandeur and great moment. I have long used an office in one of these places, in a landmark building sitting atop the dozens of railroad tracks forming the terminus at New York's Grand Central Station at 42nd Street.
Without question, this is one of the world's great urban cores and arguably is the commercial heart of New York City. Connected via a multitude of warren-like tunnels, passageways and certain very grand interior spaces are the astonishingly urbane and majestic Grand Central Station with its barrel-vaulted ceiling of stars and granite balconies; the stainless steel art-deco masterwork of the Chrysler Building nearly a thousand feet high at its needle (braced at its corners by stainless steel gargoyles unseen by most); the Met Life building (formerly Pan Am), a monolithic flattened octagonal imposition some sixty stories in height around which flows the fabled Park Avenue two or three stories above street level--its multi-tiered marbled lobby leading from 45th Street down to Grand Central's elegant confines; the jazz-age New York Central Building (now named after a later, uninteresting owner) across from and via tunnel connected to the Met Life tower and Grand Central and sitting atop the tracks of its builder's New York Central railroad and through which Park Avenue travels by a pair of granite, vaulted tunnels, the lobby of which building is a baroque masterwork of marble and brass, the elevators of which are red and gold and their ceilings painted with sky and clouds unlike any elevators perhaps anywhere in New York (the building's facade is of palatial elegance with massive caryatids and its peaked,copper roof is crowned with a great lantern); the Lincoln Building, a sixty-or-so story oddity of brick and hopeful Gothic fenestration; the Graybar Building, an art deco massif with huge floors but no great height; the Hyatt which used to be the Biltmore; to the south a busy nondescript building that houses what remains of an old Airline Ticketing lobby and connects to a marvelous interior that used to be the lobby of the Bowery Savings Banks (and now hosts "events"); to the north deep passageways lead to glass and steel Park Avenue corporate behemoths as they begin their march up that seemingly endless boulevard of wealth and prosperity.
Inside this interconnected urban world I have spent many days especially in winter enjoying temperature-controlled access to hundreds of shops, restaurants, transportation (several subway lines converge), a small transit museum and of course numerous banks and newsstands. On a cold day I can walk from 46th and Madison to 41st and Park (or 42nd and Lexington) without going outside. A brief strategic walk above ground also takes me to the nearby great city-within-a-city, Rockefeller Center (but that is another item altogether).
Among my favorite underground spots are:
-the food court at Grand Central where several very good food stands/sit-down restaurants are always overcrowded
-the underutilized entrance to the Lincoln Building at 41st and Madison
-the lobby of 230 Park Avenue, all marble and brass and designed to resemble a baroque palace in Italy
-a well-regarded watchmaker in an otherwise nondescript passageway far under Vanderbilt Avenue
-a deeply obscure Blimpie sandwich shop at the bottom of the steps near 45th and Madison
-an inelegant passageway that leads to the basement shops of the Chrysler Building where I find my pharmacy just steps inside the black marble hallway
-the cascade of escalators that lead from a high point at 45th street to a low point far below grade at the platform of the 7 train as it connects Times Square with far-flung Flushing and a new-fangled stadium where the Mets baseball team labors ineffectively
-the Grand Central Food Market which is overpriced but often enough provides a good baguette or last-minute dessert item on the way home
-the Baclay-Rex tobacconist in the Lincoln Building
-the former "waiting room" of Grand Central Station that now supports regular expositions and seasonal gift markets
Nearby but unconnected by tunnel is one of my favorite places in all New York, the Mercantile Library where for a pittance I have access to thousands of fiction and reference books and a club-like reading room that makes me feel like I have found a haven of clear-minded sanity in a world half-mad with greed and delusion.
Perhaps the best compliment I can pay to my City within a City is that it has never left me bored.
