Imagine yourself in the late 1800's, in a time when the Vanderbilts and Carnegies ruled the day. Imagine yourself staring up at huge buildings, and seeing these new things called automobiles. That is what people felt when they looked at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The railroad had grown so much that the terminal just couldn't handle the traffic.

Due to this, in 1898 William Vanderbilt had decided to design an expanded terminal. Four clock towers were placed on the roof and at the corners of those clock towers stood huge (14' wingspan) cast iron eagles just to add a touch of splendor. The eagles only graced the building for a mere ten years before another reconstruction time was about to take place in 1910. At that time those ever-so elegant eagles were stashed away, sold, broken up, and in some cases lost. It is just in the last 30 years that some of the eagles have been recovered.

What follows in these pages is a history of those eagles; the eagles that presided over one of the most famous railroad terminals in history.

Architectural Iron Company, of Milford Pennsylvania, the nation's foremost firm for the restoration and reproduction of cast iron, has been chosen by Metro North Railroad, owner of Grand Central Terminal, to restore these eagles as the railroad requires them.

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