Hello, and welcome to the tour! I am your guide, Andy, and I am thrilled to show you around Manhattan. Let us kick things off right here outside Grand Central Terminal. I want you to look up at this magnificent building and imagine it is nineteen twenty-three. Back then, if you took the elevator to the sixth floor, you would not find railroad offices. You would step into the Grand Central Art Galleries.
This was not just any gallery. Spanning fourteen thousand square feet, it was billed as the largest sales gallery of art in the world. If you want a sense of the sheer scale, glance at your phone to see the original floor plan from nineteen twenty-three. They managed to pack eight main exhibition rooms, a foyer gallery, and a grand reception area right above the bustling train tracks.
The gallery was the brainchild of a cooperative founded in nineteen twenty-two by notable painters like John Singer Sargent and Walter Leighton Clark. They wanted to bring American art to a broader audience, and they came up with an ingenious business model. It was essentially a high-stakes art lottery. Artists who wanted to join had to donate one piece of art every year for three years as their initiation fee. On the other side, non-artists, known as lay members, paid an initial fee of six hundred dollars, which is about eleven thousand two hundred and fifty-six dollars today. In return, they got to choose one of those donated artworks.
But how did they decide who got first pick? With a highly dramatic annual drawing. Picture this: a ritzy gala with high-society folks nervously clutching their lists of top thirty choices. A child would pull names from a sealed, thoroughly shaken glass jar. First name called got first pick. Pull up your app to see a photo of founder Walter Leighton Clark presiding over the drawing in nineteen thirty-three. The tension in that room must have been thicker than oil paint! In nineteen forty-one, legendary film star Gloria Swanson even presided over the drawing, dressed to the nines in a simple black costume and a massive black hat.
There was always a flair for the dramatic here. In nineteen fifty-seven, three hundred and fifty well-heeled art lovers gathered for the opening of an exhibition by Gordon Grant. Suddenly, a transformer fire knocked out all the power. The fancy crowd had to play an impromptu game of follow-the-leader, creeping down the dark, twisting terminal stairways to the street guided by a single flashlight beam!
The galleries thrived here for twenty-nine years before the railroad decided to redevelop the space in nineteen fifty-eight, forcing them to relocate and eventually close in nineteen ninety-four.
Even though the art is gone, the grandeur of this space still echoes with that high-society drama. If you want to explore the terminal today, it is open every day from nine A-M to ten P-M. Take a moment to soak this in. When you are ready, we can head to the next stop.
