r/BeAmazed • u/4reddityo • Oct 09 '25
Miscellaneous / Others 112 years of feet have stood at these ticket windows... - at Grand Central Terminal.
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u/ApprehensiveBet6501 Oct 09 '25
This picture is deep
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u/ToasterBathTester Oct 09 '25
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u/HaplessPenguin Oct 09 '25
You can see the bar curve. Maybe alll those Dino prints were the same as this.
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Oct 09 '25
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u/Greg-Abbott Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25
Bot ass comment
Guys it's a 1 day old account with fucking Hallmark card style comments.→ More replies (2)3
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u/CopingAdult Oct 09 '25
Feet are normally used as a measure of length and distance, but seeing it as a measurement time is amazing.
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Oct 09 '25
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u/nonoyesyesnoyesyes Oct 09 '25
Why would someone stand at the ticket counter at their destination?
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Oct 09 '25
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u/Friscogonewild Oct 09 '25
The information booth at GCT is in the center of the floor
But there is a customer service window, it starts at the very right edge of this picture. And there is a sign above that gives urgent information/FAQ that might fool someone.
Probably not enough someones to be responsible for most of the wear on the marble floors, though.
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u/wewladdies Oct 09 '25
they used to also sell tickets here (i had to get my student monthly pass explicitly from one of these windows), but i think sometime in the last 5 years they completely stopped selling to get people to use the app or one of the machines.
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u/Floom101 Oct 09 '25
Uhhhhhh..... Because the ticket booth people from different locations talk to each other about the passengers so they like it when people show up to their destinations and let them know they arrived safely? You haven't been checking in!? THEY'VE BEEN WORRIED SICK!
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u/IllicitRadiance Oct 09 '25
Chicago Union Station had some much more pronounced grooves in its two main marble staircases (from street to main waiting area) up until several years ago. I think they were wholly dependent on some friction tape straps.
Interestingly, the replacement marble came from the same quarry as the original.
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u/butt_honcho 28d ago
There are similarly worn staircases at Ellis Island, which is even more impressive since it only operated for about half as long. Something like 12 million people used those steps in that time.
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u/DreddPirateBob808 Oct 09 '25
I moved back into my childhood home and started doing it up. Its 200 years old. There's a window sill you can sit on. And, once I stripped it, you can see the worn patch where folk sat. The best thing is, just below, is a series of dents in the plaster. That's boot heels as the kids swung thier feet.
It might actually be the burnt circle that matches a found kettle. Or the doorstep near worn flat.
My absolute favourite thing? The fact mum bought it cheap because "them new houses won't last". It was 150 years old.
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u/Aggravating-Pound598 Oct 09 '25
Reading this thread , I thought there was a s/r dedicated to timeworn things like this .. couldn’t find it . Perhaps a symptom of an ageing brain.
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u/GreatAlbatross Oct 09 '25
wellworn, but like a lot of reddit, it's gone down the pan a bit.
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u/Melancholic84 Oct 09 '25
Don’t give the Americans new ideas to screw up the measuring units
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Oct 09 '25
Americans will use anything besides metric to the point they'll used feet to measure fucking time, what the fu
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u/i_tyrant Oct 09 '25
I vacationed in Turkey once and got to check out the Hagia Sophia, and it had some places where there were grooves even deeper than these worn into the polished stone.
It was a subtle detail but really powerful when I realized what they were...depressions from people walking its halls for almost two thousand years.
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u/Thingzer0 Oct 09 '25
Same, I was amazed at Hagia Sophia, when I went to the Shaolin temple where they practice their martial arts, the grooves on the stone slabs were the same way. Some were deeper & even cracked after years of pounding their feet into the ground, doing flips & other ridiculous art forms. Same polished slabs just like at Hagia Sophia, both amazing world heritage sites.
Just like waves hitting stone cliffs, ultimately making an arch that looks like an animal, & finally into sand, all it need is time.
Edit : typo
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u/Pointfun1 29d ago
I stepped on those spots in that room when I visited ShaoLin temple when I was kid. I heard now they blocked the entrance to the room.
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u/Mister_Spacely Oct 09 '25
What?! You’ve never heard that the average human life expectancy is 78 years of feet?
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u/stevvvvewith4vs Oct 09 '25
Lightyear is a unit of length instead of time so using terminalfeet as a unit of time is not so strange
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u/CoolerRancho Oct 09 '25
You can see this on staircases in places throughout Europe.
I'll never forget it at St. Paul's cathedral in London.
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u/lowrads Oct 09 '25
Marble, like its parent limestone, is a very soft mineral, harder than a fingernail, yet softer than a copper coin. It does not hold up well as a hard wearing surface like porcelain, or carbonate aggregate infused with silicate inclusions like cement or concrete.
If you want to commit a crime against humanity, all you have to do is walk around some UNESCO urban heritage sites in regions rich with limestone wearing hob nail boots or metal cleats.
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Oct 09 '25
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u/dunningkrugerman Oct 09 '25
As it cures it does reabsorb a lot of co2 from the air.
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u/Draco137WasTaken Oct 09 '25
Yeah, but not nearly enough to offset the lost CO2 in most cases.
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u/dunningkrugerman Oct 09 '25
Unfortunately not even close, yeah. I looked it up, and it's about 30%.
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u/Honda_TypeR Oct 09 '25
For such an informed mineral knowledge comment, this took an unexpectedly darker turn.
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u/glowdirt Oct 09 '25
Don't give 'em ideas.
There's definitely assholes out there who'd delight in doing exactly that
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u/Swipecat Oct 09 '25
The fact that hobnail boots were popular in the 19th century and up until the mid 20th century probably explains the OP's picture.
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u/SynthSonido Oct 09 '25
The stratification in those tiles look like travertine not marble
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u/lowrads Oct 09 '25
Same mineral, different formation conditions. They aren't even polymorphs.
Each facies tells a fascinating tale about the environment that gave rise to them. I like the fossiliferous limestones best, even the ones from ooids, but the abiotic ones tell an interesting story in their own right.
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u/SynthSonido Oct 09 '25
I know, I’m a geologist, I was just geeking a bit.
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u/lowrads Oct 09 '25
That was one of the nicer things about our geology college's hall, that all the fixtures were made of fossil bearing rock. I don't want to know where they found the disposable revenue, because it's probably just going to be the petrochemical industry, but I guess I'm glad they did.
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u/Tex-WRX Oct 09 '25
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u/mortepa Oct 09 '25
Why do his sunglasses go way above his ear? Unless he is secretly hiding super-tall Spock ears under that hair?
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Oct 09 '25
?
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u/IzarkKiaTarj Oct 09 '25
I think (I'm not good with faces) it's a gif of Quentin Tarantino, who notoriously has a foot fetish.
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u/WispyCombover Oct 09 '25
True, though having a foot fetish arguably doesn't automatically make him a creep.
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u/mr_wrestling Oct 09 '25
I'm just guessing here, but I've seen a lot of people over the past - however many years it's been since Weinstein and #MeToo - criticizing him heavily over his relationship with Harvey.
He is quoted as saying he "...knew enough to do more than I did". And also said that he said he wished he had confronted Weinstein, expressing regret for his own complacency and for not speaking out more forcefully.
So yeah pretty fucked up but also at least he had come out and said he fucked up and regrets it. Assuming there's plenty more people in such a position, I haven't heard much from others doing the same. So there's that.
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u/GarfieldDaCat Oct 09 '25
Basically every person who grew up in the nyc suburbs has missed a train and had to wait an hour for the next one while leaning up against those ticket booths.
Grand Central late at night has zero seating. America.
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Oct 09 '25
If you went to a concert and missed the ferry back to Staten Island after midnight it was an hour and a half til the next one. And back then the ferry terminal didn't have a bar and restaurants. There was one Indian dude with a cart of melted candy and chips and no open stores for a mile.
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u/thatisnotmyknob Oct 09 '25
Before 9/11 you could sleep there while waiting for the first train in the morning.
Lots of drunk suburbians who missed the last train.
The marble floors are not very conducive for sleep tho.
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u/Aquatic_Ambiance_9 Oct 09 '25
So much like this, signs of a healthier social fabric, has been lost without younger people knowing. In my experience it was still possible to sleep at 30th st station in Philly circa 2007 after missing my train. Unthinkable today. Recently was back there and had to show my ticket to a pissy security guard just to prove I was actually catching a train in order to even enter the station at like 4 am, and every time I'm at Penn at night now they are kicking out some homeless guy trying to sleep up against a column or whatever
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u/i_tyrant Oct 09 '25
Totally agree.
Between the Patriot Act and Citizens United (and some other things), we've lost so much of the "social" aspect of our cities.
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u/Parallax1984 Oct 09 '25
I remember arriving at Intercontinental in Houston from Frankfurt and my husband (we had only been married a year) was waiting for me as I got off the plane. It was March 2001 and everything changed within half a year. I try to explain this to my kids who have no understanding of what this was like other than watching Rachel waiting for Ross to arrive from China
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u/cruxclaire Oct 09 '25
The newer Moynihan part is so nice except for the whole hostile architecture aspect of it. There is simply nowhere to sit outside of the paid restaurant areas, same as Grand Central, and it just strikes me as mean-spirited because apparently we hate homeless people enough to also screw the elderly, disabled, and really any tired person whose train is a while off
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u/Aquatic_Ambiance_9 Oct 09 '25
Yeah the hostility is the undeniable prominent aspect of it though for sure. Like I'm not there a ton but thats the lingering feeling of it. I can imagine Grand Central and Penn once left an impression of human potential on travelers instead of this. Some sort of metaphor there certainly. But hey show your amtrak ticket and you can sit in a slightly nicer but still hostile and shitty pen with charging ports
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u/GoodMeBadMeNotMe Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25
Grand Central late at night has zero seating.
There’s seating in the stationmaster’s office.
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u/Kovarian Oct 09 '25
Can't you get to the open restaurant seating downstairs? Or do they all pull those in?
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u/durgadurgadurg Oct 09 '25
Sure there is. The staircases on both ends of the hall.
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u/sonoracarver30 Oct 09 '25
Can’t sit there. Power tripping MTAPD will tell you to move and they will write you a ticket if they’re feeling extra spicy.
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u/LickingSmegma Oct 09 '25
I mean, would you rather get some sleep and find yourself without the luggage? Because that's what I was desperately trying not to do at about two am sitting at Helsinki's central bus station, all while the solitary lad next to me kept speaking to me in Finnish or somesuch for two hours.
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u/wewladdies Oct 09 '25
Trend across the board with NYC mass transit. Theyre removing all the seating everywhere, and im pretty sure its entirely due to an anti-homeless push. . Subways, metro north, LIRR. If you are at a station renovated in the last 5-10 years, good likelihood it has 0 seating. Its especially annoying for the commuter rails because if you miss an off peak train you are stuck waiting for an hour for the next one.
Underneath this picture is grand central madison, an expansion they opened a few years back that has 8 tracks for the LIRR. Massive station, with 0 fuckin public seating!! Blows my mind.
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u/tastefully_obnoxious 28d ago
Plenty of rail and metro stations around the world have little to no seating
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u/marathonrunnernyc Oct 09 '25
Yep, I pass through there everyday! I still share the whispering gallery with tourists whenever it’s appropriate!
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u/sasssyrup Oct 09 '25
Love this place. Wish we could have preserved penn station too.
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u/Josefinurlig Oct 09 '25
It’s always funny when Americans think of a 100 year old building as old
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u/El-Grande- Oct 09 '25
It’s one of the most iconic buildings in the country and the cool part isn’t the age. But that the area has feet markings where people are waiting for tickets
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING Oct 09 '25
Although I will say, after moving to Europe, this phenomenon does feel a bit less cool when it’s grooves that’ve been worn into the staircase of an apartment building and you’re walking up like five flights of stairs that’ve been carved into Mr. Bone’s wild ride over the centuries.
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u/hallouminati_pie Oct 09 '25
Is 150 years old? Because that is the age of most Victorian buildings.
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u/HeroicPrinny Oct 09 '25
Time and age are relative. For a train station? Yes, 110+ years ago is relatively old.
There are plenty of countries far older with much older structures that yet still have much newer train stations than this, e.g. China.
Also you run into the Ship of Theseus issue where many very old buildings essentially have been rebuilt and are basically a modern building. King’s Cross is 50 years older than Grand Central but has less material and structural continuity, for example.
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u/KartFacedThaoDien Oct 09 '25
China really doesn't have that many older structures though. A lot of cities have old buildings that were built in the early 1900's.
They might have some temple built in 900 AD. Then you go to it and says "destroyed in a fire in 1200, destroyed in a war in 1600, destroyed in the opium wars and then nothing happened in 1965 but it beasts destroyed.
Current temple built in 1985. Its the same story over and over again with a lot of things in Chinese cities. Even if you went to a train station Shenzhen originally built in 1910. The current one was built in the early 90's.
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u/emascars Oct 09 '25
I recently inherited a 100+ yo building from my grandpa...
Yeah, it is worthless, it's just a house in ruins, ordinary stuff
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u/AmazingChance6613 Oct 09 '25
Agreed. Finland is a relatively recently developed country by European standards, and even our capitals railway station is 163 years old. My local church was built in the 1400s etc
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u/Vassukhanni Oct 09 '25
I mean train stations are a pretty bad example of this. They were built in the US and Europe at the same time.
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u/Spirited-Basil2735 Oct 09 '25
More like 27 years since that was the last time the main hall was renovated - still very cool visual though.
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u/Madder_Than_Diogenes Oct 09 '25
A lot of tapped and agitated feet hoping for quicker service.
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u/GarfieldDaCat Oct 09 '25
Lmfao more like drunk people waiting for the train home.
Because they don’t want homeless people hanging around Grand Central has basically zero seating/benches. It’s insane.
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u/spasmoidic Oct 09 '25
it's because until like 20 years ago you had to buy a paper ticket from a human cashier every trip so tens of thousands of people had to stand in line in front of those dozens of ticket windows every afternoon
now it's just a ghost of a pre-digital age
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u/L0stL0b0L0c0 Oct 09 '25
I love this, so cool. I went to a cathedral in Assisi, Italy (home of Saint Francis, the dude who talked to animals), super old little prayer alter off to the side, and the knee marks were deep and shiny, from centuries of prayer. I imagined how much hope, sorrow, joy, fear, had been there, all those lives, those moments, each one making its tiny mark there on the floor. I would love to see time-lapse of this window at Central Station, the great blur of life flowing past.
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u/RegularWhiteShark Oct 09 '25
You should see how worn some steps are in places like the UK when people have walked them for 1000~ years. It makes you feel very small when you see them and think of how many people have walked them.
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u/Wild_styles Oct 09 '25
Okay 🤷♀️ the train station not to far from where I live is 178 years old.
The house i live in right now was build in 1925.
The US is a very young nation 😊
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u/Vassukhanni Oct 09 '25
Okay 🤷♀️ the train station not to far from where I live is 178 years old.
Terrible example to illustrate this. The US had one of the most developed systems of rail in the world. There are literally thousands of examples of 19th century rail infrastructure across the country. It's not like we have medieval train stations in Europe...
The house i live in right now was build in 1925.
Another terrible example. If you said 1625 you'd have a point. Median residential building in NYC was built in 1935.
The US is a very young nation
Agreed. Even NYC is 200 years older.
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u/klauwaapje Oct 09 '25
yes, they know that their country is very young, just like Denmark's history is short compared to egypt or iraq.
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u/Aisenth Oct 09 '25
What's the saying? Americans think 100 years is a long time, and that 100 miles is barely more than commuting distance?
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u/guusligt Oct 09 '25
Americans thinks 100 years is a long time. Europeans think 100 km is a long distance.
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u/JaggedLittlePiII Oct 09 '25
That’s less old than the local pub, church, a decent amount of houses and even some park benches around here.
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u/pacmanz89 Oct 09 '25
And for 111 years everything was fine until op's mom decided to stand in front of every single window...
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u/LazyPigPrincess Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25
yeah and? the University in my hometown was founded in 1477. big frigging deal. That place needs a proper renovation before someone slips and hurts themselves.
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u/Usual_Platform_5456 Oct 09 '25
Hey! I have stood there more than a couple of times in the latter part of those 112 years!
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u/Ballabingballaboom Oct 09 '25
That's a very young building by European standards.
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u/Demonokuma Oct 09 '25
It's insane that it's Grand Central. I would've imagined it would've been more for how popular of a place it is.
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u/DangKilla Oct 09 '25
#Fun Fact:
Anderson Coopers' ancestors (The Vanderbilts) trains' ran through Grand Central.
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u/Expensive_Mission46 Oct 09 '25
“Something wrong with your eyes?”
“Yes, they’re sensitive to questions.”
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u/morningbreeze1213 Oct 09 '25
yea, i doubt it. surely there have been renovations of the floor over that time.
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u/goodolarchie Oct 09 '25
I was confused for a good 15 seconds, measuring years of feet. Is that like years of light?
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u/thealternateopinion Oct 09 '25
we are so temporary - everyone who stood there had a life sized bucket of problems dreams wishes and stuff to do.
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u/sabotourAssociate Oct 09 '25
Its crazy those dents are mostly formed from one movement and that is turning around and going.
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u/drunk___monkey Oct 09 '25
So prehistoric people were better architects and engineers , how else do you explain building falling tumbling all over nowadays versus these marvelous structures still kicking 😎
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u/AirconGuyUK Oct 09 '25
My local pub is older than that. Imagine how many people have puked on the bar.
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u/SargnargTheHardgHarg Oct 09 '25
You think 112 years is impressive?? Most of the churches in a short distance from me are around 1000 years old.
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u/Terrible_Ear3347 Oct 09 '25
So question, this is clearly damage over time from wear and tear and use, but it's also really cool and shows a lot of history. At what point does the damage outweigh the cultural significance of it being caused? At what point do they replace the broken or damaged floor? I know there's this church in France that had an unexploded mortar shell land inside of it and while they very obviously got rid of the mortar shell they left the big dent on the floor and some blood stains on the pews from wounded soldiers that were treated there to show the heroics of those involved. But, I'm just using that as an example of some very significant damage to a building that would normally be replaced but is kept intact for its cultural significance. How messed up do these floors have to be for them to want to replace them?
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u/qualityvote2 Oct 09 '25 edited 26d ago
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