Grand Central Apple Store Opens, Is Gigantic

Thousands of people crammed into the Apple store in Grand Central for its opening today, and we decided to pop in and check it out. For a 23,000 square-foot flagship store, the new Apple store occupying the east balcony of Grand Central Terminal is pretty invisible. In fact, the most striking thing about the store is its seemingly negligible presence on the terminal. From ground level, the only things giving away the presence of the world's largest Apple store are the two glowing logos and the sardine-like density on the stairway.

The store takes up all across the east balcony, then stretches over half of the other side of the terminal and disappears up a corridor that overlooks another hallway. And that's just the storefront -- it's hard to imagine the square miles upstairs filled with MacBooks.

The plentiful Apple employees in red shirts (one near the entrance told us there were 350 employees working today) helped guide the packed customers through the new store as speakers piped in Beatles tunes.

With their new store, Apple has silently and invisibly swallowed up Grand Central. It's somewhat sad to see a public institution become another mall. But on the other hand? iPads.

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