Grand Central Terminal & Pan Am Building?

Grand Central was untouched by the PanAm building.  The PanAm building was built just north of GCT.  Of course, the station is dwarfed by enormous and rather blah building.

I do remember when they were constrcting Pan Am building's support vertical steel beam columns which holds up the building. They were installed though the ceiling above the train platforms and through the center of platforms and I think down through the lower level. The beams are very noticeable as you walk down the platform. I think they have ad signs on them. The original supporting columns of Grand Central were between the station tracks. Before the Pan Am building I believe the platforms did not have steel columns going through them. They were unobstructed to end of platform. Also 2 passenger gates leading to platforms were replaced with the existing escalators leading to the Pan Am building. By the way does anyone know what the building is called now? MetLife? I remember when helicopters arrived/departed from the heliport on the roof of that new imposing building. 

Don't forget the New York Central Building with its twin automobile portals was the northern anchor of the Grand Central complex.  Its now the Helmsley Building.

The upper ring roadway extended around GCT across 42nd Street on a bridge and down a ramp into the Murray Hill Tunnel.  When I saw the tunnel in the 50s and 60s it was a two-way tunnel.  It is now a one-way tunnel.  Originally this was a trolley tunnel.

New York Airways had chopper service from the PanAm. Check out the movie "Coogan's Bluff" with Clint Eastwood. Very good scenes!

I remember reading about the construction in the newspaper as a kid.....I seem to remember that when the supports went in, 2 tracks were out of commission at a time.....funny how things stick in your head....

Peter

I rode New York airways helicopter from the old Newark airport to Idlewild (JFK airport) with stops at Wall street, Pan Am and La Guardia. The landing on the Pan Am building in that big chopper was scary.

They stopped that service after one of the birds broke a landing gear and tipped over enough for the rotors to hit the ground. At least one of them flew off the roof and killed someone on the ground. 

May 16, 1977....

Kills 5.

This may seem silly to ask, but one of the photos or drawings that is famous from the time the Terminal opened in 1913 is that it showed a huge lawn leading to the New York Central building.  Was this the way it was until PanAm was begun?  Or was there another building in place from let's say 1920-1960?  

Thanks.  I can't say I have seen any photos of that middle area.  Most photos were of the interior of the station.

Do you mean like this:

The accident occurred on 5/17/77. Pan Am helicopter flights had resumed on 2/1/77 after having ceased in 1968 due to financial losses. Five people were killed. The landing gear of a waiting helicopter collapsed causing the rotating blades to hit the roof surface and break killing four passengers waiting to board. The blade pieces crashed into the windows of surrounding buildings injuring many and killing one pedestrian on the street at Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. The helicopter flights were subsequently banned from the Pan Am building.

New York Airways short...

There was another office building, the six story Grand Central Terminal Office Building, affronting on 45th Street and which was demolished in 1963.  This was to the north side of the Terminal where the Pam Am Building was built.

Is there a good source of pics of Grand Central in the urban grit years before it was cleaned up?