Photo Of The Day

I’ve blogged quite a bit about the construction of the Second Avenue Subway here on the Upper East Side, but haven’t said much about the project to connect Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal.

Buried 16 stories beneath Grand Central Terminal a new commuter rail is being blasted and tunneled out of solid bedrock as part of an audacious $15 billion development that will span 14 miles throughout the city. The grand concourse, seen at a massive eight stories high surrounded by dripping stone walls and lapping puddles, will provide more floor space than New Orleans’ Superdome stadium when finished. It is just one of three monumental projects underway beneath New York City’s streets to expand what’s already the nation’s biggest mass transit system transporting 5 million riders a day.

But even with blasting and machinery grinding through the rock day and night, most New Yorkers are blithely unaware of the construction or the eerie underworld that includes a 160-foot cavern, miles of tunnels and watery, gravel-filled pits. Down below them, engineer Michael Horodniceanu says it’s an astonishing sight that gets him every time. ‘I look at it and I’m in wonder, I’m in awe,’ said Horodniceanu, president of capital construction for the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority. ‘I feel like when I went to Rome and entered St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time. … I looked at it and said, “Wow, how did they do that?”‘ 

Hit the link for many more very cool photos. So far the digging under Grand Central has removed enough material to cover all of Central Park under a foot of rock.