A Grand Idea: How William J. Wilgus Created Grand Central Terminal
by Megan Hoyt; illus. by Dave Szalay
Primary    Quill Tree/HarperCollins    48 pp.
1/24    9780063064744    $19.99

Hoyt (The Greatest Song of All: How Isaac Stern United the World to Save Carnegie Hall, rev. 7/22) returns to New York City’s past to trace the history of what was touted as the “biggest, grandest, most magnificent railroad station ever built”—Grand Central Station. The book opens in 1902, when chief engineer Wilgus had the radical idea to replace the city’s smoky, sooty, street-level coal-powered trains with cleaner electric trains and move them underground—a prodigious undertaking. Readers then learn about the contest between rival architects to design the new depot; details about the new Grand Central Terminal when it was completed in 1913 and as it grew (it soon housed restaurants, a movie theater, a tennis court, a hotel, a library, a ski slope, and more); and then its decline years later when it was slated for demolition and saved by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and others, who fought to have the iconic building designated a New York City Landmark. Hoyt’s lively text is chockful of information, presented in a child-friendly way (for instance, readers learn that Wilgus’s plan required thirty thousand tons of riveted steel, the equivalent of three Eiffel Towers). Szalay’s textured, detail-fueled digital illustrations ably convey time and place. Extensive back matter includes even more information, “Fascinating Facts About Grand Central Station,” a timeline, and source notes.

From the January/February 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.