How did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt get into the Waldorf-Astoria without alerting the paparazzi? A secret subterranean train station, obviously.
This is track 61, a little-known extension of the New York subway system that runs directly under the world-famous Waldorf-Astoria hotel. It has hosted numerous luminaries from General Pershing, who visited in 1938, to Andy Warhol, who used it as a party space in 1965. The trolleys were reportedly capable of transporting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Pierce Arrow car—with him inside—which could drive off the train and directly onto an elevator that would carry it topside.
And even with the construction of the new Long Island Rail Road extension as part of Grand Central Station's revamping, the site will remain—including the trains themselves—though the squatters that have occupied the space since the late seventies will likely be getting the boot (or at least bus tickets to San Francisco). [Gothamist - Image: Sam Horine/Gothamist]
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