Today’s New York Times reproduces the special 16-page 1913 section devoted to the opening of the Grand Central Terminal, and it’s available on line. We haven’t pored through it yet, but we figure it’s bound to have some interesting factual tidbits. Click here.
If nothing else, it bears reminding one and all that the original design of Grand Central called for the construction of a 20-story tower atop the terminal, so it had to be designed and constructed to accommodate that tower, which cost a pretty penny. So why — according to SCOTUS — didn’t the Penn Central Company have distinct (or reasonable) investment backed expectations to build atop the terminal eventually? A fortiori, by the late 1970s, when the Penn Central case was litigated, the terminal was surrounded by skyscrapers so it was unreasonable on its face to deny Penn Central the right to build as all others around it, and in a way that was expressly contemplated when the terminal was originally built.