Grand Central Terminal (not Station - locals will correct you) is one of the most beautiful train stations in the world, and it almost got demolished in the 1960s.
The famous celestial ceiling in the Main Concourse shows the night sky backwards. Either the artist made a mistake, or as the official story goes, it shows the sky as God would see it from above. We're going with "the artist made a mistake."
There's a secret train platform - Track 61 - that was built for President Franklin D. Roosevelt so he could arrive in New York without the public seeing him in his wheelchair. His private train car would pull directly into a freight elevator that would lift him and his car to the Waldorf Astoria hotel above.
The terminal has a hidden bar called The Campbell, which was a speakeasy during Prohibition. And yes, there really was a tennis court on the roof - it operated from 1966 until 2009.
The most impressive secret? Grand Central was built over an active rail yard. Trains kept running
underneath while workers built the station above.
