This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people.

Before she was an iconic First Lady of the United States, Jackie Kennedy was a born and raised

New Yorker. By 1975, when she settled full-time back into Manhattan, Grand Central Station

seemed doomed. Its owners, the Penn Central Railroad,

had some grand plans. A decade earlier, Penn Central had demolished Penn Station,

replacing its fabulous wrought iron concourse with a cramped terminal squashed beneath the newly built

Madison Square Garden. Here to tell the story is Natasha Wing.

Natasha's best known for her The Night Before Children's series. She's here to share this story

from her book, How Jackie Saved Grand Central. Here's Natasha with the story.

I was traveling in Paris, and I believe it was 2005, and I remember going to the Musei Dorsay.

And I had discovered that it once used to be a train station.

And at one point, it became a museum, an art museum. But it's because the building was going to be demolished. So the people rose up and said, you are not going to demolish this

building. We're going to save it. And it finally became an art museum. So when I got back for my trip from Paris, I talked to my agent,

and I mentioned the Musei Dorsay, and she said, well, that's interesting, because did you know

that Grand Central Terminal was set to be demolished? But Jackie Kennedy-onassus stepped in and helped save it. And I grew up in Connecticut.

I live in Colorado now. So we would go into New York City and, you know, it was just part of the

architecture, part of the flavor of being in the city. And I never associated it with a former

first lady.

But in the Grand Central Terminal, I did come across the plaque and I'll read it to you.

In memory and honor of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,

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