This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

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-onassis stepped in and helped save it. And I grew up in Connecticut.

I live in Colorado now, but 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,

in an age when few people sought to preserve the architectural wonders that are a daily reminder

...