Douglas Healey
Bryan Henry is credited with cleaning up Grand Central, paving the way for the terminal's restoration.
Jackie Onassis may get the credit for saving Grand Central — but this MTA sergeant did all the dirty work.
Bryan Henry single-handedly relocated hundreds of homeless from the terminal in its grittier days in the 80’s and 90s — paving the way for Grand Central’s total restoration.
The world’s most beautiful and busiest train terminal turns 100 next week, the beginning of a year-long centennial celebration that includes musical tributes, a rededication ceremony and a six-week exhibit chronicling its history.
But the start-studded celebrations in the now-pristine terminal wouldn’t be possible without Henry.
“When commuters arrived [25 years ago] they literally had to step over people,” he said.
His self-described duties as a “social worker with a gun and a badge” began in 1989, the height of the crack epidemic.
His approach, he said, included a combination of gentle coaxing — and the occasional handcuffing.
Dan Brinzac
Grand Central Terminal's main concourse in 1993.
“City agencies were bringing vans full of homeless people to Grand Central,” he said, noting The city that year had 1,905 murders that year, four times higher than last year’s 414.
Some lived in what is now Vanderbilt Hall — which in those days were full of benches.
Others lived in hollow spaces underneath the platforms a dangerous situation that often resulted in track fires so bad that they were making trains late.
The MTA — in the beginning stages of planning the station’s $250 million renovation — wanted someone to focus their energy on getting the homeless out.
Henry, a practicing Buddhist, volunteered for the job.
He counted about 400 people who used it as their home base.
“These were people I saw every day,” he said.
Then he set out to get to know all of them.
He matched drunks with programs for alcoholics, found crack addicts treatment plans and helped the impoverished navigate the confusing maze of social services that could get them off the street.
“One woman, I enticed her with coffee and donuts,” he said.
She’d become homeless after her husband died.
“The building she lived in had become gentrified. She was displaced,” he said.
He found out she had a small social security check, then set her up in low-income housing run by the Catholic Church.
Months later she came back to the station looking like a different woman.
“She was all dolled up, lipstick beyond the lines of her mouth and she had nail polish,” he said.
That time, the coffee and donuts were on her.
Despite his place in Grand Central history, Henry has no plans to attend any of the ceremonies for the station’s milestone birthday.
“I don’t like crowds,” he said.
MTA sergeant's 'dirty work' paved the way for Grand Central's renaissance
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MTA sergeant's 'dirty work' paved the way for Grand Central's renaissance
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MTA sergeant's 'dirty work' paved the way for Grand Central's renaissance
