On February 1, the New York Transit Museum will help launch Grand Central Terminal’s centennial celebration with a new exhibition in the terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall. Grand by Design: A Centennial Celebration of Grand Central Terminal, running February 1- March 15, will show rarely exhibited artifacts and photographs and oversized images under dramatic lighting to convey the building’s past, present, and future in larger-than-life detail.

“The exhibition will be physically dramatic and compelling,” says Gabrielle Shubert, director of the Transit Museum. “It illuminates aspects of the building that people may not know about and uses Vanderbilt Hall, one of the city’s most beautiful public spaces, as an artifact itself. This exhibition examines the building’s meaning and history, showing how it changed the landscape of both transportation and city.”

Grand by Design is organized around several themes that illustrate the terminal’s far-reaching impact on New York City:

• Railroads Remake New York: The story of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the builder of Grand Central, and the history of the building as a railroad terminal.
• A Grand Design: Highlights of the building’s features, from the sloping ramps that use gravity to direct traffic flow, to the roadway around it, accompanied by architectural drawings from 1903.
• Going Places!: The journeys of long-distance travelers and local commuters, plus the 20th Century Limited train and the red carpet that greeted passengers.
• Making Midtown into Mid Town: The building’s effect on developing Midtown Manhattan into a neighborhood and central business district.
• New York’s Town Square: The various uses of the building over the years, including broadcast studios, political rallies, art exhibits, and tightrope walkers.
• Decline and Renewal: The decline of rail travel in the 1970s and 80s segues into the building’s renovation in the 1990s.
• A Star is Born: The Terminal’s place in pop culture through film, books, television, and advertising.
• The Next 100 Years: Grand Central Terminal’s future, with a focus on the Long Island Railroad East Side Access project.

The exhibition is free to the public, and open daily from 8 AM to 10 PM. Transit Museum educators will be on site daily from 11 Am to 7 PM, leading 15-minute commuter tours every hour on the half hour.

For more information, visit grandcentralterminal.com.