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National Geographic : 2005 Dec
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK This secret platform is located below the Waldorf Astoria, next door to Grand Central. It is reported to have been used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 to leave the hotel after giving a speech-without being seen in his wheelchair. Tourists won't find this sealed train: It's hidden from public view. 'Meet me on 43rd Street'" She looks pleadingly at Johnson, then walks away. People are found at Grand Central too. It's rumored that most tour ists and nearly all New Yorkers use the information booth as their fail-safe meeting place in case of disaster or dislocation. It is, after all, the center point of the place that feels most central in Manhattan-the place that is both totally public and yet still protected, that is both a main entry into Manhattan and a main way out. Everything about the terminal is superlative. It's one of the biggest (49 acres) and the deepest (110 feet) as well as the busiest and the grand est terminals in the world. On an average day 700,000 people-more than the entire population of North Dakota-pass in and out of Grand Central. Sitting for an hour in the information booth, hypnotized by the rush hour flow, I feel as if I truly have seen the entire population of North Dakota striding by. In fact, I feel like if I stood in the main concourse long enough, I would eventually see every person I have ever known in my life. You could spend years in Grand Central before you discovered all its secrets: its Whispering Gallery, its Vanderbilt family emblems, its tennis courts, its hidden railroad cars, its private ground-floor apartment (now transformed into a retro cocktail lounge). Dan Brucker, who fields media questions about the terminal, relishes its many mysteries. One afternoon he pries me away from my perch at the information booth and whisks me into the basement known as M-42, nine stories below the lowest floor that commuters ever see. Brucker is a smallish guy with glossy black hair, thick glasses, a quick smile, and a slightly manic comportment. "This," he says gleefully, as the basement elevator groans to a stop, "is not just the deepest and the biggest but the most secret basement in the city. What's so secret about it? During World War II there were shoot-to kill orders if you showed up down here. Why? I'll tell you why. Why is because this was where the power came from to move the trains for
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