Look to your left and spot the towering, fifty-five-story stone skyscraper soaring into a flat-topped crown, distinct for the pointed, neo-Gothic arched windows near its peak. This is One Grand Central Place, though for decades folks knew it as the Lincoln Building. It spans so much office space that it was assigned the unique ZIP code of one zero one six five. And neo-Gothic just means it was designed with the dramatic arches and vertical lines of a medieval cathedral, stretched up into the Manhattan skyline.
Completed in nineteen thirty, this place held onto its namesake President in a very literal way. In nineteen fifty-six, the owner paid three thousand dollars, or roughly thirty-four thousand dollars today, for a three-foot bronze model of Abraham Lincoln. It was cast from the sketches used to create the famous Lincoln Memorial statue in Washington. Take a peek at your phone for a neat nineteen twenty-nine shot of this massive structure under construction.
In two thousand and nine, the building was renamed One Grand Central Place and got an eighty-five million dollar face-lift. The renovation brought renovated elevators and crisp air-conditioning, but it temporarily evicted poor Abe. The statue was loaned out to an estate in Massachusetts, but thankfully it returned to the lobby on April fifteenth, twenty fifteen. This building also made a dubious mark on modern history in March twenty twenty, becoming the site of New York's first reported person-to-person spread of the virus during the COVID nineteen pandemic.
It is quite a resilient place, and incredibly, the building is open twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week. Feel free to admire the soaring facade, and whenever you are ready, our route continues.
