Origin stories
In her lifetime, our long-time Upper East Side neighbor Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had many careers: wife, mother, first lady, photographer, book editor and landmark preservationist. In fact, every time you walk around Columbus Circle, say a prayer at St. Barts, run around the Central Park Reservoir or get off the train at Grand Central, you have Jackie O. to thank. She saved them all.
For many of us, Grand Central Terminal, in particular, has become another Apple Store location, with lots of other shops we zip past to be on time for work. We forget about its rich history, which began in 1913, and many newbies to our city as well as native millennials don’t even know we almost lost it.
In 1975, Jackie formed the Committee to Save Grand Central Station and participated in rallies to protect the Beaux-Arts terminal from demolition by a city developer who wanted to build yet another skyscraper.
She wrote a letter to our then-mayor, Abe Beame, urging him to fight the plan, saying it was “cruel to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud moments, until there is nothing left of all her history and beauty ...”
To remind us of her efforts, there’s a plaque that hangs in Grand Central’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Foyer. There’s now also a new book of historical fiction that recounts the tireless hours spent to keep the terminal intact, and, in the course of its narrative, reveals interesting facts that even this native New Yorker wasn’t aware of.
“The Masterpiece” (Dutton) by Fiona Davis provides an inside look at Grand Central, including the Oyster Bar, Whispering Gallery, Campbell Apartment and, most importantly, the glamorous lost art school within the terminal, established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen and others (it closed in 1944).
It’s within this iconic architectural gem that two very different women, Clara Darden and Virginia Clay, 50 years apart, strive to make their mark on a world set against them.
In 1928, a 25-year-old bohemian — Clara — is teaching at the Grand Central School of Art, on the seventh floor of the terminal’s east wing, while having her illustrations observed by the male gaze, which diminishes the work, created as it is, by a “woman artist.” Brash, fiery, confident and single-minded, Clara is determined to achieve creative success, but is soon blindsided by the Great Depression, which destroys the entire art scene. Poverty and hunger, though, do little to prepare Clara for the greater tragedy yet to come.
Nearly 50 years later, in 1974, the terminal has fallen into disrepair as acutely as Virginia’s life. It’s full of grime and danger, from the smoke-blackened ceiling to the pickpockets and drug dealers who roam the floor.
Although there’s a fierce lawsuit to preserve the once-grand building, Virginia hopes the place stays open simply because the recently divorced mother needs her job in the information booth. But when she stumbles upon an abandoned art school within the terminal and discovers a striking watercolor hidden under the dust, her eyes are opened to the elegance beneath the decay. Virginia’s desire to find the artist of the unsigned masterpiece leads her on an impassioned mission, not just to unravel the mystery of Clara Darden’s disappearance in 1931, but to join the battle to save Grand Central.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s activism serves as an inspiration for Virginia to keep fighting for what she wants for herself, what she needs for her daughter, and ultimately for what is right.
Our neighbor would have been 89-years-old on July 28. Her dedication to preservation lives on here on the Upper East Side, as well as around the rest of city, and now in “The Masterpiece.”
“The Masterpiece” is out August 7, when the author will do a 6:30 p.m. reading at Rizzoli Bookstore 1133 Broadway, at 26th Street.
Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novel “Back to Work She Goes” about a SAHM who tries to re-enter the workforce.