At Grand Central, Time for Flags to Leave the Station

The Grand Central sky, as it always was — and should be again

On 10 July 2007, The New York Observer published an abbreviated version of the following essay arguing that it's time for the flags in Grand Central's main hall to come down. You can read the Observer essay here.

Of the more than 1,100 New Yorkers who responded to a Gothamist poll based on the Observer essay, fully two-thirds agreed that the Grand Central flags have overstayed their welcome.

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Unbidden, they came. Not in response
to any appeal, official or otherwise,
but as visceral, desperate, speechless inarticulations of solidarity and resolve.
In a matter of hours after 9/11 morning, there were thousands of them, and they were everywhere in New York — on storefronts; in building lobbies; on bumpers, subway cars and lapels; lining the avenues.

Among all those impromptu American flags were two
placed in the iconic main hall of Grand Central Terminal: The first, a flagpole standard, soon was joined by an enormous 40-foot-by-20-foot banner, vertically suspended over the center of the room. Smaller flags have been hung in Grand Central's main hall before, especially during times of war, according to Metro-North spokeswoman Margie Anders,
but a flag of this size — nearly four stories tall — is
"basically unprecedented".

Both flags hang there still. But they can no longer mean
what they meant in the days and weeks after 9/11. Now, four-plus years into a war that, according to a recent CBS poll, more than three-quarters of Americans think is going "badly" and more than 60 percent think we should never have started in the first place, the flags at Grand Central don't unite us; they divide us. This is only the most obvious reason they must come down.