Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why a passageway beneath Grand Central Terminal has a different scent. We’ll also get details on Mayor Eric Adams’s decision to designate the Elizabeth Street Garden as parkland.
The air smells different in the passageway beneath Grand Central Terminal that connects the 42nd Street shuttle train and the 4, 5 and 6 trains on the Lexington Avenue line. It’s not the usual sensibility-assaulting New York subway blend of garbage, urine and sweat. There’s a scent — vaguely sweet, with a definite freshness and woodiness, as well as notes of eucalyptus, according to people who can discern such things. It is the essential element of a holiday-themed promotion for a fragrance retailer that has taken to spelling the famous station’s name “Grand Scentral.” The retailer, Bath & Body Works, paid the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s advertising concessionaire to use diffusers to spread the aroma. The company also paid to have all the advertisements in and around the passageway carry its messages, and they are hard to miss. With a nod to OMNY card users, nearby turnstiles say, “Tap into your gifting side.” There are videos on monitors. There are also signs from the M.T.A. explaining that the passageway “is being freshened with a special fragrance” and that passers-by “may see a faint mist from the scent diffuser.” There are actually four of the devices along the passageway — high-tech commercial diffusers that will send out as much as 30 pounds of scent before the promotion ends on Nov. 30. Jamie Sohosky, the chief marketing officer of Bath & Body Works, said the project aimed to “elevate the everyday moment” of trudging between the shuttle and Grand Central — and put the company’s “fresh balsam” scent on commuters’ minds by putting it in their noses. “You can do a plug-in in your home,” she said, or a candle. “It’s like a mini version of this.” “Smell is the most powerful of all the senses, the shortest pathway to a moment, a memory, a place,” she said as she walked toward the Lexington Avenue end of the passageway. “We want, when they see this, to remind them of the memories that we can help them bring home.” She mentioned “their grandma baking cookies and that sort of thing.” Putting a scent in a subway station is a first for the M.T.A., but the project is the latest immersive experience at Grand Central. Last month Brandon Stanton, the photographer behind the best-selling book “Humans of New York,” paid to replace all the advertisements in Grand Central with photographs, making art galleries out of the corridors that commuters thread their way through. For the M.T.A., scenting the passageway below Grand Central is a way to monetize an asset “in a way we’ve never done before,” said Mary John, the transit agency’s director of commercial ventures. Advertising “has provided really important revenue” for the M.T.A., she said, “but it’s underleveraged.” Promotions like the one with Bath & Body Works can “bring in revenue beyond fares and taxes and subsidies, and that’s incredibly important for us.” “Brands are wanting more experiential moments” that can hold people’s attention,” she said. Neither she nor Sohosky would say how much Bath & Body Works had spent on the campaign. Are projects like the scent promotion commercializing the subway? “I think the subway is already commercialized,” John said. “We’ve been selling ads in the subway for many, many, many years.” The reaction to the scent has been mixed. “It’s fun,” said Jodi Applegate, a TV journalist, as she walked through the passageway on Tuesday. “I wouldn’t necessarily want it in my living room, but it’s not too bad for a subway station.” Isabella Eagle of Old Bethpage, N.Y., said that “it takes all the other smells out.” The passageway, she said, “doesn’t smell like a train station.” And Jen Tegano, who was with her, said she was surprised that the diffusers “can cover this much area.” “My house doesn’t smell this good,” she said. “It’s like one of the hotels. It’s not overpowering.” But some commenters on social media were underwhelmed. Merrite, on Bluesky, lamented the “cheap fake pine-tree scent.” But Liss, on TikTok, gave Bath & Body Works a shout-out for “immersing me in their holiday ad and saving me from morning subway stench.” Kallie Marie, also on TikTok, wrote, “Trust me, this tunnel never smells this good.” WEATHER Look for a mostly sunny, breezy and dry day with a high around 51. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 39. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Nov. 27 (Thanksgiving.) The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. City Hall moves to designate the Elizabeth Street Garden as parkland
Mayor Eric Adams’s administration has moved to make the Elizabeth Street Garden a public park. That would make it difficult for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to build housing on the one-acre site after taking office, as he promised during the campaign. City officials had pushed for more than a decade to put a complex with affordable housing for older people on the city-owned site in NoLIta. It was an abandoned lot until a gallery owner who lived across the street leased it in the 1990s and cleaned it up. The gallery owner responded to pressure from the city by setting up a nonprofit to oversee the garden he had created, which evolved into a community space. For many housing advocates, the fight over the garden’s future became a case study in how difficult it is to build housing in wealthy neighborhoods. Last year celebrities including Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Patti Smith wrote to Adams, protesting the eviction of the nonprofit. Adams eventually relented, saying he would build more housing elsewhere. Mamdani said during the campaign that he would restart plans to build housing on the lot, angering supporters of the garden. But last week Louis Molina, the commissioner of citywide administrative services, wrote to the parks commissioner, Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, saying that the city “unequivocally and permanently dedicates this property to public use as parkland.” On Wednesday, Randy Mastro, the first deputy mayor, said in a statement that “we are committed to ensuring Elizabeth Street Garden remains a beloved community park and cannot be alienated in the future.” METROPOLITAN DIARY Hometown Habit
Dear Diary: I was living and working in Okinawa some years ago when I traveled to Tokyo to meet my college-age son for a long weekend there. We were exploring a fashionable neighborhood one morning and had joined a small group of local residents who were waiting at an intersection to cross the street. The signal to walk had not come on, but the traffic was light, and I was itching to cross without waiting for the light telling me that I could. Then I spied a well-dressed, middle-age Japanese woman on the other side of the intersection. She appeared to be gauging the traffic as well. When she dipped her toe out into the street, I took it as a sign and started across myself. As we passed in the middle of the street, she nodded to me. “I’m from New York,” she said. — Marsha Mose
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Dodai Stewart, Lauren Hard, Tara Terranova and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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