The Grand Central Terminal Information Booth Clock
New Yorkers have been meeting under it for more than a century. Its faces are not opal, and they are probably not worth $20 million, but the real story is still good.
The clock in the middle of everything
Grand Central Terminal officially opened on 2 February 1913. Its Main Concourse is enormous: the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission gives it as about 375 feet long, 120 feet wide and 125 feet high, under a vaulted ceiling painted with gold-leaf constellations on a deep blue sky.
At the center of the Tennessee marble floor stands a circular information booth, joined by a cylindrical bronze core to a matching booth on the level below. On top sits a four-faced bronze clock, readable from any direction across the floor.
The commission described the booth and clock in its 1980 report designating the terminal's interior a city landmark. For travelers, though, the clock has always been simpler than that: it is the place to meet.
See also: the current time in New York and other cities on OnlineClock.app.
The terminal around the clock
The clock stands in the second great terminal on the site. The terminal's official history says the original Grand Central Depot opened in 1871, and that the present building was partly paid for by an idea from chief engineer William Wilgus: once the tracks were buried, the space above them could be leased to developers.
The building itself came out of a design contest. A 1903 competition was won by the firm Reed and Stem, and the railroad also brought in Warren and Wetmore for the facade, with the two firms working together as Associated Architects. Carved oak leaves and acorns, symbols of the Vanderbilt family, appear throughout.
Landmark status protected the terminal from demolition, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in 1978. Metro-North took over the terminal in 1982, announced a full restoration plan in 1990, and celebrated the centennial in 2013.
The main concourse clock has a smaller relative. The 1980 landmark report also describes an octagonal information booth on the Lower Concourse, its windows topped by red marble panels and clocks.
Who made it
According to research by Untapped New York, the clock was designed by Henry Edward Bedford, a sculptor and executive of the Self Winding Clock Company. That company built it, and the Seth Thomas Clock Company made the movements. Electric Time Company, which later restored the clock for the MTA, gives the same pairing of makers.
It was not the firm's first job for the railroad. Self Winding also supplied clocks to the earlier Grand Central station, and in an 1886 letter a superintendent of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad praised one for never failing to wind.
The clock has not always behaved. Untapped cites a 1954 New York Times report that it went back to the Self Winding factory in Brooklyn for repair after its movements became eccentric. At times it ran so far off that staff threw a large paper bag over it so passengers would not trust it and miss their trains.
Opal, or opal glass?
A favorite tour-guide line says the four faces are made of opal. They are not, at least not the gemstone. Untapped traces the claim to newspaper stories from 1999 and 2000, one of which described the faces as polished from precious opal.
Earlier sources are plainer. The 1954 Times article simply called the faces glass, and the 1980 landmark report describes a four-faced bronze clock without saying what the faces are made of. Histories of the terminal by Anthony Robins and Sam Roberts call them opaline or opalescent glass.
Opal glass is a milky, translucent glass, a long way from a precious stone. A Metro-North spokesperson confirmed to Untapped that the faces are opaline glass, not opal.
The $20 million question
The other famous claim is that the faces are worth between $10 million and $20 million, supposedly according to the auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's. Untapped traced the figure to an anonymous Wikipedia edit made on 18 May 2006, after which it spread through newspapers and tours.
Untapped says it contacted both auction houses and reported no valuation from either, and it calls the claim false. Since the faces are glass rather than gemstone, the figure has no obvious basis, and no formal appraisal has come to light.
A bullet, a staircase and the atomic clock
The clock carries a scar from 1968. According to Sam Roberts's history of the terminal, as reported by Untapped, a police officer's bullet pierced one face during a Youth International Party protest in the concourse. The damaged face stayed in use until the restoration of the 1980s and is now in the collection of the New York Transit Museum.
Beneath the booth is a smaller secret. A trap door inside it opens onto a spiral brass staircase leading down to the lower concourse, a quick route for staff that most passengers never see.
Accuracy is now handled centrally. Untapped reports that until 2004 the terminal's roughly 1,000 clocks were set by hand. That year they were tied to a master clock on the Lower Level near Track 117, which takes a time signal every second from an atomic clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
The booth clock itself has since had a technical refit. Electric Time Company says the MTA hired it to make the clock keep accurate time, replacing the old movements with new ones and copying the original hands.
See also: how atomic clocks keep official time on OnlineClock.app.
Meet me under the clock
The phrase meet me under the clock is now firmly attached to Grand Central, but its origins are murkier. An Untapped tour guide says the line first referred to a clock at the Hotel Astor in Times Square, and that clocks at the original Penn Station and several hotels later shared it.
The 1945 film The Clock, starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker, helped make the habit popular. Whoever said it first, the phrase now belongs in most people's minds to the bronze clock at the center of Grand Central's concourse.
Questions people ask
Are the Grand Central clock faces made of opal?
No. They are opal or opaline glass, a milky translucent glass. Metro-North has confirmed they are not the gemstone.
Is the Grand Central clock worth $20 million?
There is no evidence for it. The figure was traced to an anonymous 2006 Wikipedia edit, and no auction house valuation has been found.
How does the Grand Central clock keep accurate time?
Since 2004 the terminal's official clocks have been tied to a master clock that receives a signal every second from an atomic clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory, according to Untapped New York.
Is there a staircase inside the information booth?
Yes. A trap door inside the booth leads to a spiral brass staircase down to the terminal's lower concourse.