America adopted the bald eagle as the emblem of the United States of America in 1782. The eagle symbolized strength, beauty, long life, flight, and freedom, characterized by its lofty flight and mountain top nesting. It not surprising then, with these idolized attributes, that the eagle would become an oft-seen decorative feature in architecture and memorial sculpture. In New York, a city that prides itself on its role as a powerful, resilient, and endlessly innovative center of financial, political and cultural life, the eagle has been incorporated into the built environment. Architects, designers, and sculptors have decorated their banks, civic buildings, statues of war heroes, skyscrapers, and airports (of course) with the noble birds. To see them, you usually just need to look up.

Grand Central Eagle, ca. 1966. The current Grand Central Terminal was preceded by two other train stations: Grand Central Depot (1871) and Grand Central Station (1901). Grand Central Station, which was not so much a new building as the renovation and expansion of the earlier Depot, was the shortest-lived of the iterations. Completed between 1898 and1901, it stood for less than a decade, replaced by the Beaux Arts icon in 1913. A feature of Grand Central Station still lives though. Adorning its four towers were larger-than-life cast iron eagles. As Grand Central Station was being demolished, a number of them were removed and sold or auctioned off. One is seen here in Mount Vernon, New York in 1966. In 1999 the first of the eagles returned to the Terminal and was installed at the Lexington Avenue entrance to the Grand Central Market at 43rd Street. Two years later, a second eagle, rescued from a monastery in Garrison, New York, was installed here at the Terminal entrance at Vanderbilt and 42nd Street.