Art: Grand Central Heaven

One of the most gaped-at murals in the U.S. glistened last week with a fresh, 750-gallon coat of paint. The concourse ceiling of Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, a 40,000-sq.-ft. turquoise and gold-leaf image of the heavens (a romping Pegasus, twinkling Mazda stars, eight signs of the Zodiac) gleamed as bright as new. The big arched picture-ceiling, put up in 1913, had never before been repainted. It was a ticklish job. The busy, perpetually thronged space beneath it could not be shut off—and a mere half pint of paint dropped no feet might permanently discolor a man buying a railroad ticket or kissing his wife goodbye. The redecoration was finished, without mishap, by 30 workmen standing on the largest suspended scaffold ever built.

Grand Central’s stardusted ceiling has always been a focal point for both esthetic and astrological controversy. On at least one point—placement of Zodiac signs and constellations—Designer James Monroe Hewlett came a cropper. As one letter-to-the-editor writer once informed the New York Times: “The ceiling stars were all put on exactly backward. Their arrangement ii a mirror image. . . . This reversal is, of course, as confusing as a map showing New York on the West Coast and San Francisco on the East. . . otherwise, very accurate. . . .”