But even the Pennsylvania lacked the opportunity for economic return that was gained out of the new Grand Central station, hardly a mile distant. That it was not asleep to the possibilities is shown by the double row of high-rental shops which line the arcade entrance to that waiting room. A central post-office, a clearing house for the great mail of New York, was erected spanning the maze of tracks at one end of the station. And recently the railroad has begun the erection of a huge hotel spanning the tracks at the other end In this it is following the example of the New York Central, which some time ago devised a group of hotels as a part of the development of the Grand Central property. One of these hotels is completed and immensely popular; the other has just been begun. The New York Central will not only derive a generous ground rent from these taverns—it places itself in a splendid strategic position to receive the traffic of their patrons. It is a somewhat singular thing—an instance perhaps, of the lack of vision of railroaders of an earlier generation—that modern hotels were not long ago made an integral part of our larger passenger terminals at least. Our English cousins have not overlooked this opportunity. The great hotels builded into their terminals have long since enjoyed a world-wide reputation for their excellence. Upon our own continent both the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk railroads have not been slow to take advantage of similar opportunities. And to a considerable degree, at least, their example has been followed by certain roads right in the United States—the Santa Fé and the Delaware and Hudson are the first to come to my mind. The hotels of these railroads may not be, in themselves, directly profitable. But there is no question but that they are distinct factors in the development of passenger traffic, and so, in the long run, distinctly profitable.
Consider for an instant, if you will, the possibilities of the electrified passenger terminal as applied to some others of our metropolitan American cities. Take Boston, for instance. In that fine old town the electrification of its two great passenger terminals some time ago approached the dignity of becoming a real issue. Oddly enough the two railroads which would develop the situation in the larger of its two terminals—the South Station—are the New Haven and the New York Central, the lessee of the Boston and Albany. Though both of these systems participate in the joint operation of the new Grand Central Terminal of New York, neither of them has leaped at the possibility in Boston. The tremendous financial difficulties through which the New Haven property has been struggling for the last six or eight years and from which it has not yet emerged, are undoubtedly the cause of this. The Boston and Maine Railroad, which owns and operates the North Station, is in even worse financial plight. And it is hard for an outsider to see any immediate possibility of the application of electric power to the great North Station and the vast network of through and suburban lines which radiate from it. Nor is the North Station so situated as to render it possible today to give it an economic development even approximating that of the Grand Central.
THE P. R. R.’S ELECTRIC SUBURBAN ZONE
The block system operated automatically by electricity. The signal over
the right hand track reads, “Stop.” Picture taken near Bryn Mawr, Pa.
ELECTRICITY INTO ITS OWN
Electric suburban train on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Philadelphia and Paoli.
The Boston and Albany is a co-tenant with the New Haven in the huge and murky South Station. It has always been a rich railroad. Twenty-five years ago it was building superb stone bridges and stations, structures of real architectural worth—a full quarter of a century it was in advance of almost every other railroad in America. In those days the Boston and Albany probably did not dream that the time would come when its chief asset would be the value of its right of way across the newer and the finer portion of Boston. “The Albany Road,” as the older Bostonians like to term the B. and A., has the extreme possibilities of cost for the electric transformation of its lines all the way from Worcester east, not only met but many times multiplied in the development possibilities of the Back Bay district which it now traverses with its through track and interrupts with its somewhat ungainly storage yards. These yards, now used for the holding of empty passengers coaches, occupy tremendously valuable acres on Boylston Street within a block of Copley Square—the artistic and literary center of the Hub. They are essential, perhaps, to the economical operation of the road’s terminal, but when you come to consider the growth of the city, a tremendous waste. They have stood—a noisy, dirty, open space—stretching squarely across the path of Boston’s finest possible development. If these were marshlands, like those that used to abound along the Charles River, Boston long ago would have filled them in and added many valuable building sites to its taxable area. For remember that the development of the Grand Central Terminal has proceeded far enough already to show that in these days of heavy steel and concrete construction, and with the absolute cleanliness of electric railroad operation, it is possible to build a hotel over a big railroad yard without one guest in a thousand ever knowing that a train is being handled underneath his feet every thirty seconds or thereabouts. Indeed, in the Grand Central scheme provision is being made already for the construction of an opera house right over the station approach tracks; the congregation of St. Bartholomew’s is building over the same railroad yards one of the finest church structures in America.