Station Will Restore 'Kissing Room'

Once, this marbled northwest corner of Grand Central Terminal had a nickname—"the Kissing Room"—and a pedigree, thanks to the cozy access it offered passengers to the gilded Biltmore Hotel directly above.

But in the decades since the Biltmore was gutted and turned into an office building and first-class express trains like the Missourian and the Knickerbocker were discontinued, the Biltmore Room has taken a drab turn. The spot, where arriving travelers once embraced their sweethearts, pals and family, now houses a pair of shoeshine and repair kiosks, a flower stall and a newsstand that doesn't do the brisk business of others in the bustling station down the hall.

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The northwest corner of Grand Central Terminal is set to be renovated into an arrival area for riders using the new East Side Access terminal. Andrew Hinderaker for The Wall Street Journal

That will change by 2019, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials say, when the newsstand will be ripped out and replaced by a pair of escalators and an elevator that will return the Kissing Room to its status as a busy meeting place for travelers arriving in New York—in this case, the 80,000 Long Island Rail Road riders who will use the new East Side Access terminal below Grand Central.

The MTA board of directors is poised to approve $15.5 million in funding Thursday to pay for the renovation of the Biltmore Room, which has required the agency's planners to delicately balance the aesthetics of their landmark terminal with the expected influx of new passengers from the new station dozens of feet below.

Some preservationists reacted warily this week to the MTA's plans, which passed a committee vote Monday without much notice. Agency officials say they are restoring an underused space in the terminal to its former importance.

Simeon Bankoff, of the Historic Districts Council, called the plan for escalators "addlepated" and said it would alter "one of the last remaining historic transit spaces."

Alex Herrera, an architect at the New York Landmarks Conservancy, said the MTA would need to move cautiously to avoid running afoul of landmark guidelines. "'Landmarked' doesn't mean 'frozen,' but it means that [the state] has to find that the changes are appropriate," he said.

The State Historic Preservation Office signed off on the addition of the two single escalators and one elevator in May, clearing the MTA's way to begin the project without more intensive review. The authority also consults voluntarily with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on its plans for Grand Central, said a spokeswoman for Metro-North, the MTA department that manages the station.

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An artist's rendering of the Biltmore Room with its planned escalators at Grand Central Terminal. MTA

The Kissing Room was always a special part of Grand Central, said Dan Brucker, the manager of Grand Central tours and a spokesman for Metro-North.

"It's really the only place on the concourse floor in the terminal where people can actually stop and read and look and examine the flowers," Mr. Brucker said. "It has that unusual feature, being that it is like an enclosed, separate area."

The Biltmore Room was completed in 1915, and provided an elevator link to the famously deluxe lobby of the eponymous hotel that stood above it, at the corner of East 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. Then known as the Incoming Train Room, the station-within-a-station provided express train passengers easy access to taxis, up the stairs on East 43rd Street, and to the Roosevelt Hotel via a passage to the north.

But the nickname derived less from the lobby's easy access to hotels than from the trains that used the long platforms of the station's west end. That is where troop trains arrived.

"This is where, more often than not, New York Central would platform their incoming trains bearing homebound soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines," Mr. Brucker said. "The room was just really a contained explosion of joy, of happiness seeing these troops returning," he added. "Hence, its name."

By the MTA's own estimation, the room has been underused in the decades since. The Biltmore's shell was converted into an office building in 1981. Down below, four corner glass canopies and the central newsstand were added in the 1990s, but with mixed results.

MTA spokesmen said the Hudson News outpost generates less revenue than its other locations in the complex. The flower stand, Dahlia, does steady business, however, as it seemed to be on Tuesday afternoon. ("People are getting their kisses at home, but they are making sure to ensure it," Mr. Brucker explained.)

On the room's western wall, the old chalkboard that once listed arriving trains remains, behind glass, still covered in listings for expresses like the Lake Shore Limited, or the local to Pittsfield and North Adams, Mass., trains on the then-private lines.

In a nod to the once and future struggle to keep time, the board has separate columns for each train, labeled "Due" and "Will Arrive About," respectively.

Nearby, a slow but steady stream of men in business attire settled into the high-mounted seats of Eddie's Shoe Repair to get a diverse assortment of shoes shined. Employees of the businesses said they were aware of the MTA's plans but declined to comment on them. Their fate isn't yet clear.

The new escalators in the room will be tailored to meet the aesthetics of the surrounding station, a National Historic Landmark.

Its construction plans, developed in part by architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle, which led the development of the 1990 Grand Central Terminal master plan, call for preservation of marble floor pavers, and a layout of the new escalators that preserves the Beaux Arts sight lines of the existing station.

Some 15 stories below, eventually, will be the two-story caverns of the new LIRR terminal, an $8.2 billion project that MTA officials say is the single largest mass transit construction job under way in the country.

Even with the old Biltmore Hotel long-disappeared behind the facade of an anonymous office tower, Mr. Brucker said, the renovated arrival hall will connect future LIRR travelers to the Kissing Room of the past, even if busy commuters don't realize it.

Entering the room, he said, "was once a moment of such great happiness, of people returning home, of lives starting."

Write to Ted Mann at ted.mann@wsj.com