Devised in December 2008.
As this is quite a busy dance, particularly bars 17-24, it brought an image of Grand Central Station to mind.
Music
Any busy jig. A suitable recording is ‘The Alder Burn‘, Dancing Forth, Gordon Shand and his Scottish Dance Band, track 4.
Grand Central Terminal
The terminus station,
Grand Central Terminal
(often referred to as “Grand Central Station” or just “Grand Central”) on the intersection of 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan is the railway station with the largest number of tracks worldwide (67, with 44 platforms on two levels).
In its present form, the station was opened by the
New York Central Railroad
in 1913 after ten years of construction, and was in direct competition with the – hardly less ginormous –
Pennsylvania Station
nearby, operated by the
Pennsylvania Railroad
(of which there is nothing left above ground). After the railway had lost most of its importance as a means of transport, the station was supposed to have a large high-rise building erected on top of it, but the New York City monument protection authority issued a veto. The resulting legal conflict went all the way to the Supreme Court, which nixed the project for good in 1978. At that point, the railroad company –
Penn Central Transportation Company
, which had resulted from a merger of
New York Central Railroad
and
Pennsylvania Railroad
– was already bankrupt and no longer in a position to maintain the building. In the end, the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
took over responsibility and restored it at taxpayers’ expense.
It is said that in the United States, the cathedrals look like railway stations and the railway stations like cathedrals. Grand Central Terminal, which was built in the
Beaux Arts
style, is an excellent example of this, and anyone who would like to see a cathedral which looks like a railway station should look at, e.g., the
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
in Los Angeles, appropriately located on the intersection of Grand Ave. and Temple St.
Grand Central Terminal serves mostly commuter trains from the surrounding areas of New York City. Long-distance train depart from the “new” underground Penn Station.
From “Anselm's Notes on Dances”, by Anselm Lingnau
(Used by permission.)