New York Station's famous whisper

New York Central Station (in English Grand Central) is one of the most famous buildings in the city. Its ten-year construction was completed in 1913 - the station was designed for the growing railway needs of the modern city.

This may seem surprising, but a century after the construction was completed, the Central Station still holds the world record for the number of platforms - there are 44 at the station! The huge waiting room of this station is world famous for photos and films.

Constellations and zodiac signs are painted on its ceiling, and some of the stars shine so that visitors seem to have holes drilled through the ceiling through which sunlight penetrates. (In fact, the creators of the station mounted special bulbs in these places).

The underground level of the station is no less interesting. Its beautiful arches resemble the cellar of castles of the Old World. In one of them is the bar "Oyster", the oldest institution at the station, opened in the same 1913!

Right at the entrance to the Oyster, an unmarked intersection carries a whispering gallery. If you go to one of the four corners where the ceiling vault rests on the ground and say something in a whisper, then this sound will be perfectly audible to a person standing in a corner diagonally. Even in a busy rush hour, when crowds are rushing around, this strange broadcast of sound works great.

The secret here is in the form of the ceiling and the smooth surface of the tiles that were used during construction. Such tiles, patented by Spanish architect Rafael Gustavino, were widely used in the New York metro building of the time.
But the main secret of the whispering gallery is that no one knows if it was specially conceived by the architect or it turned out due to pure chance! However, this is not so important - it still turned out to be a great place where two people standing meters from each other can whisper, despite the noise of the crowd. They say that this is a popular place for marriage.

Did you know about such whispering galleries? They are in other places. For example, I heard about one at the Mayakovskaya metro station in Moscow. It's true?