GRAND CENTRAL VISION: How early "distance learning" helped create the world's pre-eminent rail station

Commentary by Steve Dunlop

If you've ever doubted the potential of what we know today as "distance learning" - whether you're watching a streamed lecture from a Yale physicist, or working on your own presentation skills online - pay a visit to Manhattan's landmark Grand Central Terminal.  It turned 100 this month.   And it holds the key to a very early distance learner you probably haven't heard of: William J. Wilgus. 

Or, as I call him here for reasons I will explain momentarily, Upstate Bill.

William J. Wilgus (1865-1949), the unheralded driving force behind Grand Central Terminal.

Upstate Bill is not the first name that's usually associated with the building of Grand Central.  That honor has often gone to Whitney Warren, the wealthy, white-shoe Manhattan designer who co-founded the prestigious architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore.   

(Wealthy white-shoe Whitney Warren Wetmore William Wilgus.  Whoa.  See why I opted for "Upstate Bill?")

However you refer to him, Upstate Bill Wilgus had almost nothing in common with any of those other W's. 

Whitney Warren was born into the cloistered parlors of 19th century high society New York.  Upstate Bill was reared in blue collar Buffalo.  Warren's cousins were Vanderbilts.   Bill's cousins, if he had any, never mattered to historians.  

The highlight of Warren's schooling was the 10 years he spent in study at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  Upstate Bill attended Buffalo Central High School, and never went to college.  The apex of his education was a course in drafting, which he took via that well-known precursor of the Internet, the US Mail.  The class was offered by a small but growing institution, which we know today as the Cornell University College of Architecture.

But that unremarkable mail order course, which Bill took in Buffalo while Whitney Warren was packing for Paris, was about to become critical to the future of New York City. 

Railroads were the technology giants of their time, and Bill Wilgus rose rapidly in that field.  By the turn of the 20th century, he was chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad.  As trains in increasing numbers trundled at street level into the overcrowded, 1869-vintage Grand Central Depot, they left a ubiquitous blanket of cinder and ashes - and, sometimes, human bodies - in their wake. 

Exposed railroad tracks along Fourth Avenue, now Park Avenue, leading to the old Grand Central Depot, circa 1898.  Courtesy beautyofnyc.org.  

The rail line acceded to residents along Park Avenue (then known as Fourth Avenue), and lowered the tracks into a vented tunnel between 59th and 96th Streets.  But these were steam engines, and visibility in the tunnel was always poor. 

On the snowy morning of January 8, 1902, an express train from White Plains missed several signals in the tunnel.  It rear-ended another train waiting to enter Grand Central.  Fifteen people were killed.   Fed up with the growing toll of deaths and injuries, the State of New York promptly moved to ban all steam engines from Manhattan. 

Bill Wilgus was the railroad's chief engineer.  He had to do something.  (Besides, Whitney Warren probably couldn't spare the time - he had just finished building the New York Yacht Club.) 

Combining his hands-on experience as an engineer with the drafting skills he acquired in his learn-by-mail course, Wilgus came up with a grand vision - a grand central vision - that the classically trained architects of his time could not see. 

Antique postcard illustrating the excavation for the new Grand Central Terminal.  Courtesy beautyofnyc.org.

Coal and steam would be kicked to the curb.  There would be a new terminal with multiple levels below ground, blasted 60 feet into the Manhattan bedrock.  Trains would no longer arrive in Gotham spewing dust and soot.  Like the new terminal itself, they would be electrically powered, and enter midtown Manhattan cleanly and safely underground.   Digging down allowed for a double-deck approach for long distance and suburban trains.  It effectively tripled the old depot's capacity. 

The project would be outrageously expensive, consuming nearly an entire year of the railroad's revenue.  But again, Upstate Bill had an out-of-the-box solution.  Once the new underground train yard was covered over, he proposed leasing the space above it to developers.  It would become one of the largest single real estate endeavors in US history.   He called it "taking wealth from the air."   We call it the start of high-rise Manhattan.  Upstate Bill's ingenuity led to the creation of buildings that became home to many of today's Whitney Warrens.  

There is no record of what a Cornell correspondence course in drafting might have cost Bill Wilgus.  But it had to be one of the best investments he ever made.  And if he were alive today, there is no question he would dispense with the US Mail.  He would be taking that correspondence course online. 

And he would have plenty of company.  Around the world, as we are seeing every day, millions of Bill Wilguses are now discovering the virtual classroom.   Online lectures, MOOC's (massive open online courses) and distance learning will change not just their lives, but the lives of their teachers, their educational institutions, and without a doubt, our lives too. 

Is the university world ready?  How about the rest of us?  And if the first generation of distance learners could give us Grand Central Terminal, what will the next one bring? 

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(For further reading, consult: "Grand Central's Engineer: William J. Wilgus and the Planning of Modern Manhattan," by Kurt C. Schlichting.  The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.) 

WHEN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING: What Les Miserables (the film) teaches us about reaching an audience

Media commentary by Steve Dunlop

There has always been something a little misleading about the term "mass media."  What we call mass media, like anything else, is actually consumed one person at a time.  And specific forms of media resonate more with some people than others.  Just as many drivers prefer a stick shift to automatic, some of us absorb information better with newspapers than TV.  Or with podcasts than radio. 

Or, for that matter, with movies than with plays. 

Tom Hooper's film adaptation of Les Miserables, the Victor Hugo novel that became the fourth longest running play in Broadway history, reminded me of that fact over the weekend.  There are many sad moments in Les Mis, but for me, there was one more: realizing how close I had come to missing it.  

I had walked into the theatre preparing to nap for 2 1/2 hours.  My wife and I saw Les Mis the play in its prime, and we had been both disappointed and bewildered.  Despite all the positive buzz, It struck us as a disjointed story with an overly orchestrated script and a pretentious cast.  

We resolved to bring our middle-school-student son to see the film, so he could get extra credit in French class.  But we secretly wondered why 60 million playgoers around the world were so enamored with this story.

Which is why we were so pleasantly surprised when the film rolled.  Les Mis the movie had the opposite effect.  Unlike the stage production, it not only kept us awake.  It captured us.   (Our son was bored, but hey, at least he didn't nod off.)  

Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman in the 2012 film version of Les Miserables.  Courtesy Universal Pictures. 

After the long Broadway run, the core narrative is familiar to many of us.  Set in the turmoil of post-revolutionary France, Les Miserables revolves around Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a petty criminal who changes his ways following an act of kindness from a Catholic bishop.  Christians, especially, may find it refreshing that a priest is finally one of the good guys. 

Valjean is being pursued by Javert (Russell Crowe), his former jailer, for breaking parole.  Both Jackman and Crowe surprised us with their command of singing.  In a gutsy production choice, the songs were done live to film, not in a tracking booth. 

Perhaps if I had read the book first - all 1500 pages of it (or 1900 in French) - I would have appreciated the stage production.  But the play's complex story line was almost completely lost on me.  Les Mis is a deeply moral tale, an allegory of the primordial struggle between good and evil, and the transformative power of forgiveness.

But this lavish film - with its computer enhanced beauty shots of 19th century Paris, close-ups at critical moments, and an audio mix where I could understand every lyric - proved a far more effective vehicle for communicating Hugo's story, at least to this member of the audience. 

Many veteran reviewers are lukewarm on Hooper's effort.  Top critics on rottentomatoes give Les Mis only a 58.  It may not have the same effect on you that it had on me.  But where one form of the narrative had failed with us, another succeeded.  At the very least, this remarkable film is powerful evidence that whatever your story, there's more than one way to reach your audience.

When it comes around again, I may even give the play another shot. 

FAKE FRIENDS: Everything I need to know about Facebook I learned from Joan Jett

Media commentary by Steve Dunlop

LIsten to podcast version here

A lot of people have asked me over the last few years: Why aren't you on Facebook?   

The answer is because I don't want to mess with friendship.  

"You don't lose when you lose fake friends." - Joan Jett

I'm not declaring a pox on all social media.  Quite the contrary.  We were an early and enthusiastic adopter of LinkedIn, which for most professionals makes a good deal of business sense.   And I don't want to slam businesses that find Facebook a valuable tool to engage their customers.  (I'm not so sure about that value, but that's a different column.)  

I had a personal aversion to Twitter when it first hit the scene, but there is no denying that it has evolved into a quick, top-line way to communicate to your friends and colleagues in a flash.  If the original slogan had been "look what I just found out," instead of "what are you doing right now" (as if I care?),  it might have sat better with me.  

But I can't say any of these meritorious things about Facebook.  I'm not saying you'll never, ever find us there - just not in the near future. 

I don't get how anyone can "friend" thousands of people on Facebook without feeling like a bit of a charlatan.   The comedian Steve Hofstetter reportedly accumulated some 200-thousand "friends" on Facebook before the service, smelling the coffee, reduced the number of allowable "friends" to 4,999.   (How's that for housecleaning?)

You can send thousands of tweets, and accumulate thousands of business contacts, but you cannot have thousands of friends.  Friendship, says the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a relationship between two people who hold mutual affection for each other."  If you could imagine a straight line connecting two points - with casual acquaintanceship at one end and romantic love at the other - friendship would lie roughly in the middle.  

Can I really rely on thousands of people to build me up when I'm feeling down or alone?  Or count on those hordes to honor their word when I need to confide something?   Can I, in turn, live up to their expectations?   Especially when there are just so many of them? 

We live in a time when the traditional rules governing human relationships are being reevaluated, and sometimes rewritten.  Please don't mess with friendship.   It is a basic human need, based on shared outlooks, experiences, and interests.  We all need to be able to distinguish our real friends from the acquaintances, cutouts, and assorted  mirages.  

One of my favorite records from the 1980s - it was a hit, in fact, a full year before Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg was born - sums it up for me.   Maybe it will for you, too.  

SILLY SEASON: Obama’s New York visit heralds the start of the real fun - and not just for politicos

 by Steve Dunlop

Given its status as the world’s richest city, it’s little wonder that politicians from all over the country flock to New York to raise money.  ‘Twas ever thus, you might say. 

The problem is that in 2012, to run a credible campaign, politicians need more of that money than ever.  Exponentially more.  And those of us who actually live and work here are not removed from the hook by simply saying we “gave at the office.”  Politicians of high stature will make you pay, especially in a city where it is especially true that time is money.   

The point was driven home on Monday, as President Obama made his most recent campaign jaunt to Gotham: three stops in a single day, capped by a gala at the Waldorf-Astoria featuring Bill Clinton and Jon Bon Jovi. 

Obama and Clinton focused their remarks on economic opportunity.  They should know.  This single presidential trip to Manhattan raised a reported $3.6 million.   Where can I invest in that hedge fund?  

The NYPD dutifully cleared the way, with the usual escort convoys and pop-up frozen zones.   Sure, the President of the United States deserves all the security the Big Apple can muster.    But getting caught up in campaign gridlock can make even Wall Street’s masters of the universe feel like a humble speck in their own hometown. 

I was one such speck on Monday... caught unexpectedly behind a police line outside the Waldorf.  I was on my way there, not to cover the President, but to another event one floor below the  Obamagala. 

Aware that the chief executive was in town, I tried to time my arrival to avoid getting trapped.  LIke most of the people around me, I miscalculated. 

“You can’t get down there,” an officer on scene bellowed to no one in particular, as I stood at the head of a crowd on the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 49th Street.  Impatient executives in wingtips and high heels tapped on their iPhones.  A few took pictures of the southbound street in front of the Waldorf, eerily devoid of traffic.      

I asked the officer if the Park Avenue entrance to the hotel was open.  “You can try,” he shrugged.  But like Lexington Avenue, 49th Street was closed off, to both traffic and pedestrians.  The quickest way to the Park Avenue side of the hotel was to go down to 48th Street, then walk over and up a block.  A few of my fellow trappees were debating doing that.  Then, in that half-despondent tone that muttering people often adopt in crowds, I heard someone say, “Don’t bother... that entrance is closed off too.”

It wasn’t long before a phalanx of Sanitation Department dump trucks, filled with sand, moved into place in front of the hotel.  My cell phone rang.  It was my photographer.  “I can’t get anywhere near you,” he reported.  “Everything’s closed off.  Are you inside yet?”

Mobile phones do have a way of distracting you from the task at hand.  When I ended the call and looked up again, the dump trucks were gone.  I didn’t think dump trucks just suddenly disappeared, like the characters in Swept Away.  Especially in gridlock.  But these, somehow, seemed to. 

The bottleneck of humanity was starting slowly to loosen.   I joined the throng headed up Lexington Avenue, and finally made my way into the Waldorf.  Once inside, there was no sign whatsoever of the President of the United States.  And that, of course, was the plan. 

Of the 100 or so fundraisers the president has appeared at in this election cycle, 21 have been in New York City.  And this one won’t be the last.  In fact, Sarah Jessica Parker is hosting a blowout for her favorite president here in town next week.  

Just remember, it’s silly season.  It can get hot in mid-June, of course, but be prepared to be frozen.

ARRESTING DEVELOPMENTS: Don’t blame reporters for doing their jobs - or try to “protect” them when they do

Media commentary by Steve Dunlop

This was not a good week to be a member of the working press.  As a longtime member of that press, I’m not complaining – just stating fact.

If you were covering the sex abuse scandal at Penn State for a local TV station, you had your live truck overturned by a mob angry at the firing of Joe Paterno.  (Note to colleges: never dismiss a popular coach late at night, after your student body has already kicked back with a few beers.) 

If you were covering the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York’s Zuccotti Park, you might have found yourselves in handcuffs, rounded up right along with the protesters. 

A

student journalist is among those taken into custody by New York police as Zuccotti Park is emptied of Occupy Wall Street protesters.  
Photo by College Media Matters.

Danger is part of the job description when you’re a reporter – whether you are in Afghanistan or Brooklyn.  I’ve never been shot at or had my live truck overturned, but I have been pelted with rocks, bottles, flying glass, even sod from the infield at the old Shea Stadium.  No pun intended, but those risks come with the turf. 

But arrested?  For doing your job?  Maybe in North Korea.  But in the United States of America, that’s supposed to happen to gangsters and drug dealers, not reporters. 

If you look at the working press credential issued by the Police Department of the City of New York, you will see that the bearer “is entitled to cross police and fire lines” when covering a news event.  It also notes that the bearer “assumes all risk in case of accident.”  

“Assuming all risk in case of accident” puts a responsibility on reporters to consider their own safety when covering a story.  That’s not just to preserve life and limb, however.  It’s to keep from inadvertently becoming - by virtue of “accident” - part of the news event you are trying to cover.

That’s why when New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said reporters were blocked from Zuccotti Park “for their own safety,” it was at odds with the rules - not just the rules on the press card, but the longstanding rules of engagement between press and law enforcement in New York. 

Journalist groups such as the Deadline Club (www.deadlineclub.org), on whose board I serve, were swift in condemning this gap between official policy and the on-the-ground reality.  Just as an angry crowd is wrong to vandalize a live truck trying to cover a news event, so are law enforcers stepping over the line when they round up reporters covering a story.  In both cases, members of the press are just trying to do what they were sent out to do.

The arrests of several media representatives were subsequently voided.   They never should have been made in the first place. 

I have reported in New York for a long time, and have always had a good working relationship with law enforcement.  We respect each other’s boundaries.  That is as it ought to be.  The events in Zuccotti Park are way out of sync with my own experience.  Let’s hope they’re an aberration.