Fifty years ago when Commodore Vanderbilt began the first Grand Central Station--depot, they called it, in the language of the day--he made one error of judgment. His choice of a site proved to be magnificently right, though he selected a spot that was practically open country, then technically known as 42nd St. The story goes--it is a typically American story--that his friends laughed at him, remarking that a person might as well walk to Boston or Albany as go away up to 42nd St. to take a train for those cities. But the people did come, and they admired the commodore's new station, which is perhaps not surprising, since the commodore had set himself to build the greatest terminal in the world. Many Americans considered the new "depot" as only second to the capitol at Washington, and it served as an excellent show place when visitors came to town. Europe might have its cathedrals, but it had no Grand Central Station!
The commodore's one mistake lay in thinking that his fine new station would last a century. Within ten years an addition had to be built; in 1898 it had to be entirely remodeled and enlarged, and fifteen years later it was entirely demolished to make way for the present building which would be adequate for handling the city's ever-increasing millions.
There seems to be little doubt that the city of N.Y. and its environs has become within the last decade larger even than London. The population of greater London (including all the separate administrative entities within the Metropolitan Police District) is estimated at 7,435,379. Jersey City, Hoboken, and the other N.J. cities on the west, as well as Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, New Rochelle, etc., on the north, although politically detached, are included in the "city" of N.Y. in the larger sense, their political detachment being in a certain sense accidental. Including these, the population of N.Y. area corresponding to the Metropolitan London area is 7,583,607. The population of N.Y. City proper is 5,261,151. The London area comparable with this, viz., the part of London governed by the London County Council has a population of 5,028,974. Comparing the areas of the two--N.Y.C. with 327 sq. miles and London with 692 sq. miles, it is hard to understand how the respective populations should approximate each other so nearly until it is remembered that New York grows perpendicularly instead of horizontally, that it usurps more air rather than more land. In some of the downtown business streets, such as Wall or Rector, the buildings tower so high above the narrow thoroughfare that they form a kind of deep canyon along which the wind is drawn as through a tunnel.