Pennsylvania Station 1910-1963

[Radiohead]

"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

- "Farewell to Penn Station," New York Times editorial, October 30, 1963 (as found on nyc-architecture.com)

I looked all over WNY for a photo thread dedicated to the old Pennsylvania Station to no avail. So I thought I'd start one. Arguably the greatest architectural loss in NYC, if not American history.


Data pages
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Penn_Station3.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2388/2163723600_1bb4d3f9c6_o.jpg

1920
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/154/420715759_b2af4b1a4e_b.jpg

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Early postcard view
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/326623789_049ba4445a_o.jpg

1936 postcard
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Greyhound
http://images.nypl.org/?id=482565&t=w

http://www.lostmag.com/blog/4a23398r.jpg

[Radiohead]

http://blog.aia.org/mt-static/plugins/Ajaxify/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/imagemanager/images/favorite_architecture_images/u1061377.jpg

http://files.blog-city.com/files/aa/17043/p/f/penn_station.jpg

http://images.nypl.org/?id=482562&t=w

http://data.greatbuildings.com/gbc/images/cid_1138862136_020069v.jpg

http://images.nypl.org/?id=79511&t=w
Penn Station is in the center

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/nycbw/041.jpg

http://pbskids.org/bigapplehistory/images/0306_afternoonpenn_lg.jpg

http://www.fotoarchiv.com/portfolio/Schaefer/station.jpg

http://www.architectureweek.com/2003/0723/images_/12210_image_1.jpg

http://data.greatbuildings.com/gbc/images/cid_1138862060_230063v.jpg

[Radiohead]

Stairway from waiting room
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0411/photos/119995pv.jpg


http://www.urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/images/Jacobsprotesting.jpg

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/nycity_old_carrageways.jpg

Main waiting room
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/nycity_old_mainwaiting.jpg

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/PENN.jpg

Arcade
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/nycity_old_pnarcade.jpg

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/GON004-Penn.jpg

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/10/26/nyregion/26penn.large.jpg

http://www.cnn.com/TRAVEL/NEWS/9803/06/penn.station/link.tracks.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/44/181297126_8307a20325_o.jpg

[Radiohead]

1960's: The end is near.
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0411/photos/119989pv.jpg

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http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0411/photos/119991pv.jpg

The overhangs were added to illuminate the place, but look tacky and tastless from this angle
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0411/photos/119993pv.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0411/photos/119994pv.jpg

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[Radiohead]

Demolition

Propaganda brochure:
(PDF file)
http://newpennstation.org/site/docs/LIRR_Penn_Station_brochure.pdf
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http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/gon-penn1.jpg

http://www.lostmag.com/blog/lostpenn.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2240/2240182362_ddf74b46f1_o.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/exploring_citr/penn/demolish.jpg

Saving the eagle. Weren't they generous:cool:.
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/28penn.l.jpg

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/eaglelarge.jpg

http://www.cityofsound.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/06/06/pennstation.jpg

What it was replaced with
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Madison_Square_Garden_ad.jpg

http://nyc.metblogs.com/archives/images/2006/03/penn%20station_greasy%20row.JPG:confused:

[Alonzo-ny]

Nothing about the exterior of this building impresses me. But my god that interior exemplifies what a beautiful transcendant space is supposed to be.

[lofter1]

Pillar after pillar marching all the way along 32nd Street is pretty damned impressive from my POV.

[GVNY]

Now do not laugh as I explain this--just allow me to explain.

I like to write--a lot, yes--when I am ill. It most certainly clears my mind and permits me to stay focused. I specifically write essays, as they allow me to hone my writing skills.

One essay I wrote, in the period of a few days, was on Pennsylvania Station and the station's demolition, as well as the nationwide consequences of it. In the essay, I try to correlate the destruction of the station with the saving of many important structures in the Pacific Northwest, including the two prized train stations on the Puget Sound.

It originally featured photographs, but since there are already multitudes of pictures within this thread, I thought it would be appropriate for me to edit them out. Also, because I am posting the article on WiredNY, I had to revise the format from Word. Hopefully there are no mistakes, and hopefully it reads the least bit professionally.

Enjoy!

[GVNY]

The Deconstruction of




Pennsylvania Station: New York’s Great Shame





The Story of the Design, Construction, and Ultimate Destruction of



New York City’s Pennsylvania Station (1900-1966)





By: GVNY





Sunday, December 2, 2007



By the time the turn of the twentieth century shook up America with an exceptional industrial roar, the “Standard Railroad of the World,” the Pennsylvania Railroad, had already extended her shimmering steel rails throughout the east. When mapped for railroad atlases, the convoluted, yet all-encompassing “Pennsy” system resembled less a railroad, but the twisting, crowded veins that stretch within the complex human body. Like these veins, which carry blood to the heart, Pennsylvania rail lines were the lifeline which carried supplies, as opposed to blood, to the pulsing economic and industrial heart of the United States. These rails were, and remain so today, the crowning achievement of railroad planning, and the pinnacle of railroading efficiency. By 1900, with the passing of only fifty-three short years since the founding of the celebrated railroad, the Pennsylvania had already developed and enhanced a rail system that was envied by her competitors, and admired by those who served on her, traveled on her, and lived nearby her broad steel ribbons of track. Like a visionary mentor, the Pennsylvania ushered the railways out of an era of infancy and into an era of state-of-the-art modernity, all the while becoming the world’s largest publicly traded corporation, as well as its busiest railroad.1 The Pennsylvania more than earned her branding as the standard railroad of the world, as very swiftly she became a rail colossus among ordinary giants. She was the pride of the United States; a technological showpiece that exuberantly declared that with limitless funds, human ambition, and the determination of our spirit, civilization is capable of terrific accomplishments.

While the Pennsylvania Railroad impressively stamped its world famous maroon keystone herald on much of the east from Saint Louis and Chicago to Jersey City in 1900 (it once considered extending trackage trans-continentally), 2 it lacked one attribute that could only, and was, characterized as embarrassing—the railroad stopped at Jersey City. One mile beyond the deep waters of the imposing Hudson River is America’s sprawling premier city of cities, whose magic island has captivated the world’s imagination through cloud-scraping skylines and overwhelming wealth. New York City is irritatingly close to the mighty railroad’s grasp, yet is unattainable. Manhattan isle, the focus of the uniquely American metropolis, is surrounded by wide, forceful currents of sea water. This limiting barrier would force the Pennsylvania to ferry its patrons from their marvelous terminal in Jersey City to the railroad’s private dock in Lower Manhattan, under the tall, masonry towers of the Finance District. The absence of a great Pennsylvania Railroad terminal in America’s paramount city was a serious psychological concussion.3

The natural suggestion of establishing a terminus within New York City was understandably not an original idea for the Pennsylvania or any of the railroad’s competitors.4 The lure of the city was too great to not conceptualize various schemes detailing methods to reach the shores of Manhattan. Many times previously the railroad had been involved in discussions with rival railroads to construct a connection into the city. Three of those instances actually became proposals which, save for economic recessions, expenses, and disastrous tunneling efforts, may have been realized.5 Over time, with the failure of these laudable alternatives, a solo attempt at tunneling under the North (Hudson) and East Rivers soon became the preferred option for the Pennsylvania.6 At once, multiple plans to tunnel under New York City were formulated. Vast in scope, cost, and danger, they all represented an engineering undertaking virtually unrivaled at this period in history. Trimming away unnecessary or overly complicated means to reach the city, the Pennsylvania Railroad finally agreed upon a proposal to break into the New York City frontier—and it was tremendous.7

The contracts delegated out to various construction companies would require the boring of two, single-tracked tunnels under the North River near Union City, New Jersey to Midtown Manhattan. In Midtown, the two North River tunnel tracks would rise on a grade into a large, below street level classification yard for passenger cars. Further east of the yard, the tracks would burrow under Manhattan once more, while increasing from two tracks to twenty-one. These additional tracks would feed into and service a great station. The station itself, as the Pennsylvania Railroad management envisioned it, would be an extraordinary structure capable of stunning even the most jaded New Yorker. The station head would dominate two city blocks and extend over eight acres. This awesome Pennsylvania Station, as it would be named, would be the largest railroad station in the world. From Pennsylvania Station, the tracks would continue inside the tunnel across the island, dive further underground, cross under the East River in four single-tracked mile long bores, and resurface once more in Sunnyside, Queens at the world’s largest passenger classification yard.8 From Sunnyside, Pennsy tracks would be elevated onto a lengthy trestle which would arch over Queens and eventually lead onto a great bridge over the formidable Hell Gate. The seventeen thousand foot long Hell Gate Bridge would be the largest and strongest steel arch bridge in the world,9 and provide a through-rail line across the entire Atlantic Coast.10 With its subsidiary, the New Haven Railroad, the Pennsylvania would have access to potential customers from as distant as St. Louis to Boston. The entire project could only be described by superlatives, and it would cost the railroad in excess of one-hundred million dollars—an unfathomable sum of money in 1900.11 But, if one company could afford it, it was indeed the Pennsylvania Railroad. In one year, the permits and approvals were acquired, and soon the massive project broke ground. In a few years time, there would be no more lush Pennsylvania ferries traversing the busy Hudson.

November 27th, 1910 was a momentous day for New York City as the main components of one of the largest constructions projects in history—certainly New York City’s history—was finally complete. Only the Hell Gate Bridge portion was incomplete, and there would be seven more years until the first train finally rolled over the graceful, arched red bridge. Trains were now crisscrossing the Pennsylvania Station tubes, an engineering marvel, and the Pennsylvania alas had her grand entrance into America’s city of dreams and aspirations.12 Colossal in every sense of the word was the project’s crowning achievement—Pennsylvania Station. Designed by Charles F. McKim of the premier architectural firm of the United States at the turn of the century, McKim, Mead and White, whose neoclassical emphasis was very much in fashion at the time, Pennsylvania Station was a sensational Beaux Arts masterpiece. For a commission of two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Charles McKim’s fifty million dollar celebration of rail travel did not disappoint.13

Requiring the demolition of over five-hundred buildings, fifteen million bricks, twenty-seven thousand tons of steel, five-hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet of Milford pink granite, and digging so far deep New Yorker’s exclaimed, “I can see down to China!,”14 the station towered over one hundred-fifty feet high. Lavishly clad in pink ornamental granite quarried from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania Station was a Roman dream. One’s first view of the dignified station was typically on Eighth Avenue in the center of New York City, where eighty-four prodigious Doric columns fronted a façade modeled after Berlin’s legendary Brandenburg Gate. A commanding concentration of meticulously organized stone-sheathed steel columns and imperial cornices, McKim produced a most effective visual power that demanded respect from both Pennsylvania Railroad patrons and hurried passers-by alike. Seemingly carved from the tough, earthen granite composing Manhattan isle herself, the same storied rock that anchors the reaching skyscrapers down at Wall Street and Broad, Pennsylvania Station stirred only the most tremendous excitement and exaltation. With the stone-weighted appearance of being millions of tons, the station shoved its intense weight to the ground and dominated its large Manhattan block like a regal throne. High above pedestrians, the loftiest position on the entrance façade was concluded by a stone balustrade which supported a magnificent seven foot wide clock draped in granite wreaths. Here, sculpted maidens were guarded on their sides by powerful stone eagles, those meticulously stylized and manually crafted by the praised Adolph Weinman.15 The composition was arresting.

Proceeding through the royal main portico, one of four great gateways under giant, airy windows, one would find themselves inside the barrel-vaulted arcade, a stone thoroughfare lined with shops and lunette windows that playfully bounced rays of sunlight onto the marble floor. Here, upscale boutiques sold oddities and standard fare items for both the traditional commuter and the hordes of tourists, as well as general services for the hundreds of thousands of daily pedestrians. The end of this lengthy passageway carefully linked with two loggias, expansive colonnaded, gender-separated waiting rooms that set precedent with regards to the sumptuousness of its furnishings and architectural details.16 In these rooms, gentlemen shared stories over swirling cigar smoke and fine brandy, while dressy women gossiped over the latest New York scandals and tended to their children. Often both parties would soon reunite inside the regal dining room and café, capable of welcoming over five hundred individuals at one time, possibly for a relaxing brunch with fellow commuters and travelers.17 Presumably after the partaking of a gourmet meal or snack, a passenger would exit the dining room and re-enter the arcade through to the main waiting room via a grandiose staircase. The room was a sight to behold! Surrounded entirely by dominating, sixty-five feet wide lunette windows which allowed sunlight to pour in from outside, the ancient Roman Baths of Caracalla inspired waiting room was an apex of the station, a culmination of superior design and revolutionary American technology.18 The lofty, coffered ceiling rose an incredible one-hundred and fifty feet high, supported by monolithic six story high columns of pink travertine, while the two entrances to paralleling avenues were protected by six commanding Doric columns.19 Marble ticketing offices were carefully carved into the station’s walls, providing shelter for ticketing agents, and marble pedestals supporting intricately designed lampposts provided the only artificial light source in the entire great room.20 At night, these lampposts illuminated hushed New York commuters on their shuffle home to their wives and children, while the great vaulted void soaring above them remained shrouded in mystic darkness. There were no chairs in this waiting room for this was a space to stand and admire! 21 Alas, if there were any doubts about who funded the completion of this outrageously expensive and pretentious wonder, one needed to look no further than north or south. Vast blue and tan topographical maps of the United States flanked the avenue entrances, and the Pennsylvania Railroad valiantly marked her rapidly expanding commercial territory—territory that produced such enormous wealth that the Pennsylvania was isolated in its terrific success and endless accolades. An unrivaled work of architecture and stunning in its complex entanglement of design and engineering, the waiting hall was truly a sublime public space, a genuine work of art that encouraged the profound human act of imagination and wonder. Experiencing the waiting hall, one knew they were not anywhere; they were in New York City!

The great tour of the possibility of humankind was not over. To board waiting passenger trains, one needed to encounter one more magnificent flight of stone steps and advance into the grand concourse. From the stairwell vantage, the encompassing view was awe-inspiring. Soaring above all pedestrians was a dreamlike glass and steel train shed reminiscent of the great railway sheds of industrial Europe, particularly London’s Liverpool Street Station. Graceful, slender and delicate steel beams thrust ever-skyward from the floor and culminated in superb glass domes that framed magically the nighttime constellations of New York’s sky—a true ethereal quality.22 The concourse floor, wonderfully suspended over the busy railroad tracks by the resolute strength of steel, provided a stunning visual feast by leading the understandably wandering eye into the depths of the station and to the crowded trains themselves (the marvel of an electric train, no less). 23

The train platforms, which are sunk deep beneath Pennsylvania Station’s street level floor, are accessible only through stairs and elevators, but are exposed to the brilliance of sunlight—a terrific feat considering the depth of which the tracks are buried.24 A passenger on a premier Pennsylvania train set, such as the Broadway Limited, must have been quite captivated with the splendid glass and steel room after riding the subterranean rails underneath the metropolis for quite some time. Today, words and photographs fail miserably to accurately capture the great space’s class and elegance. The grand concourse was the ultimate in concourse design and construction, a marvelously successful implementation of modern technology. After a decade of construction, the verdict was clear and unanimous: the Pennsylvania Railroad had created a New York City treasure.

Pennsylvania Station was inevitably an enormous success simply by the demand it serviced, and by 1912 the station was handling at least five hundred trains daily, with a maximum of fifty during the brisk rush hours.25 The rush hour scenes played out daily were world famous, captured on film by both amateurs and Hollywood studios. Upwards of three billion people passed through the monumental station’s stone caverns between 1910 and 1963, with peak usage in the roaring 1920’s and especially World War II. During this period of wartime, passengers traveled on the nation’s railroads ninety-five billion miles in 1944, 26 compared to only thirty-four billion in 1938.27 Pennsylvania Station was ground zero for thousands of tearful goodbyes between American soldiers and their families, and was the majestic entrance for lowly country boys seeking the ‘American dream’ in the city they believed could make it possible. For many, it did. Pennsylvania Station was the embodiment of all that was majestic, beautiful and often heartbreaking. The station was the soul of the city she served, yet in time, in a horrific act of abhorrent vandalism, her loyalty would be betrayed.

The 1960’s were a particularly troubled time in the United States, with political turmoil rampant and stirred by the Civil Rights Movement, a presidential assassination, a hugely unpopular war in Vietnam, and severe riots affecting a great many American cities. Guided by massive government subsidies for highways and suburban housing, white, middle class families continued the mass exodus out of cities in what would become known as the “white flight,” leaving previously prosperous cities of the nation, America’s proudest achievements, to rot as the social buffer between concentrated poverty and great wealth was eradicated. Dismayingly, individual and family priorities had largely become the primary concern over those of civic and community importance. New York City would not truly feel the weight of these overwhelming burdens until the 1970’s, when the paramount city of the world, the only metropolis left intact during the world war, collapsed into a corrupt, bankrupt crisis.

Similar to the collapse of civic involvement and community awareness in America, railroads were also feeling the pressure of the individual: the personal automobile. While freight shipments on rails prospered (it too would eventually falter), journeys by passenger train were rarely the preferred mode of travel. The airplane had finally become a viable transport alternative, replacing trains as the primary long-distance carrier. The automobile, the mainstay of sprawl and the American people, had snatched a significant portion of the railroad industry’s short distance traffic.28 This left only intercity traffic remaining, and with respect to the Pennsylvania Railroad, the fall in rail traffic erased an enormous chunk of Pennsylvania Station’s usage. Use of the station had declined from one hundred-nine million people in 1945, to only fifty-five million in 1960.29 The Pennsylvania Railroad was experiencing a major decline in traffic that had once made the station supportable. If the railroad was to maintain its operations, it would either have to encourage and regain new ridership, or immediately reduce expenses. In due time, the Pennsylvania, the great railroad that had financed and erected the station, was becoming desperate. Maintenance costs of the station were drastically expensive, and the struggling railroad could no longer afford the price tag. As Pennsylvania patronage continued to decline and revenues dwindled, faced with a horrendous funding crunch, the railroad proceeded to allow for the natural degradation of the beautiful station.30 Months without bathing, commuters began to notice severe decay within the grand station: rust began to overcome the black steel which held aloft the once-cleaned dusty windows, and dirt accumulated on the coffered ceilings of the waiting room. Wafts of odor, akin to that of a decades unused bedroom, confronted passersby. In short time, the station was but a shadow of her former glorious self, a dark and forbidding space. Pennsylvania Station had fallen into disrepair. New York City watched. Through the tragedy of the scene, Pennsylvania Station retained her undeniable timeless element. Her tired, dirty exteriors only reinforced this attribute of permanence. Even through difficult times, Pennsylvania Station would remain to welcome those to New York and its magic island—always. Disregarding all of the unforgivable withering and corrosion, who could imagine a New York City without the magnificence of Pennsylvania Station? The ‘Grand Dame’ of Eighth Avenue was a civic landmark, one to be protected for the generations. It was to be loved.

But of course, with great sadness, her owners embarked on a process to challenge the station’s very existence. The Pennsylvania Railroad eventually rejected the idea of continued ownership, and quietly began talks with potential buyers for the station property development rights.31 The motive propelling the action was that the station’s plot of property, a large expanse of area near Midtown Manhattan and located on desirable transit lines, was very valuable and thus of interest to commercial developers.32 Not only could the Pennsylvania Railroad eradicate the money-losing Pennsylvania Station, but simultaneously make a profit off of a tremendous real estate sale and a portion of new commercial revenues.33 Timing for the placement of the property onto the real estate market was essentially perfect, and soon the Pennsylvania Railroad was in contact with an interested party. Madison Square Garden, Inc., whose company was interested in replacing the aged 1925 Madison Square Garden, needed a suitable location within New York for a large new facility capable of accommodating larger crowds and events without obstructing views.34 After thoroughly examining the prospect, Madison Square Garden, Inc. made aware of its attraction for the plot of land, and with the railroad, would work out a blockbuster real estate deal behind closed doors.

The agreement was soon finalized between the two enterprises, and details regarding the plan were released to the unknowing public.35 The plan: Pennsylvania Railroad would sell the station’s land to Madison Square Garden, Inc., who would in turn demolish the above ground portion of Pennsylvania Station.36 Below ground, a “new” station would be built by “modernizing” the old facilities, an awfully disingenuous term meaning MSG Inc. would clad the walls with tile and cover the ceiling in drop panels. Once the above ground structure was completely demolished, a one hundred-twenty million dollar sports entertainment complex, as well as a new office building, would be erected.37 The two companies praised the idea as a win-win situation, essentially proclaiming that the Pennsylvania Railroad would make a profit off the sale allowing the railroad to become profitable, as would MSG Inc., and New York would in turn receive a modern new rail station and first class sports complex. The talk was bought. In less than a year New York City would grant the project approval, and in 1963, demolition would commence.38

In Jet and Space Age Manhattan, epicenter of all that was futuristic, the Modernist dogma of buildings-as-sculpture and the outright rejection of Classicism and ornament onto buildings was the antithesis of all that Pennsylvania Station represented—ornament for the public’s enjoyment, Classicism for the projection of permanence and stability, and coherence with the cityscape, as opposed to the isolation required by sculpture. In the throwaway culture that was Modernist New York, a city in the midst of knocking down its historic classical treasures,39 from elegant and palatial hotels to Parisianesque public theatres—all under the guise of Modernism and progressivism—Pennsylvania Station was destined to become the symbol of all that was dreadfully wrong in the era. All was not hopeless, however. Some recognized the importance of the public space, and thus Pennsylvania Station’s existence was not without supporters. A modest sized community composed of a vocal minority of architects, artists, writers, art museums, newspaper editorials, people who use the station, and ordinary people concerned about the loss of an important New York City railway station, city landmark, and neighborhood treasure, protested the impending demolition.40 Two of those protesters were world famous urbanists: one a middle-aged lady who lived on Hudson Street in Lower Manhattan—Jane Jacobs—the other, prominent urban historian Lewis Mumford.41 Gathering outside the chain-link fences protecting the construction site, protesters carried signs of pro-Penn Station messages, and attempted, sometimes successfully, to spread their message of preservation through the media.42 If New York City allowed for the destruction of Pennsylvania Station, the preservationists argued, the city would lose an extraordinary public space to a stadium and an office tower. What would this say about us as a society, a progressive civilization, if we knock down an important civic space for one that sells hotdogs at a basketball tournament—a space only provided to those who pay a hefty ticket price? But it was to no avail. The numerous signs and newspaper awareness articles failed to stir any action from the general public, and despite the desperate pleas of the protesters, construction workers walked into the demolition zone with their tool-belts and climbed into their wrecker’s ball cranes. Kept away by that chain-link fence, the preservationists could only watch horrified. The great Pennsylvania Station was coming down.

And it did. By 1966, Pennsylvania Station existed only in photographs and in the memories of those who were lucky enough to view it, touch it, sense it, and experience its majesty.43 Brick by brick, column by column, the station was taken apart, the wrecker’s ball swinging mercilessly into the magnificent glass and steel domes that once sheltered New Yorkers from those pummeling summer rains, those heavy Christmastime snows. Pennsylvania Station’s limestone and other precious materials were salvaged, while her remains were sent to their grave, carelessly discarded in the New Jersey Meadowlands near the entrance to the tunnels that once lead directly into the great, pink granite station. There was nothing more…

New York City relatively quickly recognized what it had lost once Madison Square Garden was completed. The complex, a poorly planned area with a miserably uninspired Modernist design, left much to be desired. It also left much to be missed. Sitte, in his essay The Art of Building Cities, describes the anguishing process that allowed for the tumultuous rise of Madison Square Garden, writing, “We need the talent of the artist. Thus it was in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, wherever the fine arts were held in high esteem. It is only in our mathematical century that the construction and extension of cities has become a purely technical matter.”44 Most certainly, Madison Square was only technical and mathematical—technical in its rigid use of modern technology, unforgiving in its complete ignorance of human-scaled ornamentation, and mathematical in its cold, bottom-line construction and short-sighted destruction of treasured urban fabric for short-term numbers profit. Further enforcing this deserved criticism is the Garden’s heartless shape. A result of form-follows-function Modernist dogma that renders the structure circular-shaped (due to the stadium’s oval seating arrangement), Madison Garden is awkwardly out-of-context with boxy, gridded Manhattan. From the aerial perspective it appears helplessly ridiculous—its overall shape embarrassingly akin to that of a toilet.

The new, “updated” Pennsylvania Station was (and remains) a cramped and confusing narrow collection of tubes that led to and from the train platforms. One exited the station from a non-descript door out onto one of the major avenues, where six years previously one would have walked through an inspirational collection of carved columns and stone. The new station was pathetic, hardly befitting the largest city in the world at the time. But New York City had brought the disturbing mess upon itself. It traded public for private, people for commerce. It reinforced that old New York stereotype, but dramatically upped the ante. A New York Times editorial encapsulated the situation, criticizing, “Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.”45

The saving grace in the Pennsylvania Station saga is that its appalling demolition was the inspiration for the revolutionary historic preservation movement.46 Spurred by this singular yet profound example of stupidity, there arose a new emphasis on the saving of important buildings, neighborhoods, and even entire cities to maintain not only the historically significant fabric of our cities and towns, but its history as well. In 1965, following heated outcry from New York City citizens who were angered by the destruction of such a significant building, an importance piece of legislation called the Landmarks Law was passed by the city.47 The Landmarks Law would pave the way for signature New York City buildings to be landmarked, and thus protected from demolition.48 The preservation movement became a popular phenomenon soon afterwards as New York City exported its ideas across the nation—similar to most trends.

Since 1965, hundreds of historically and architecturally significant buildings have been saved from undeserved destruction by the Landmarks Law and supporters of the preservationist movement. Ironically, the most famous incident of such a rescued building was Pennsylvania Station’s rival railroad’s terminus—New York Central’s Grand Central Terminal.49 Held in high esteem and adored by many New Yorkers, Grand Central, constructed as a response to the completion of Pennsylvania Station, was in serious danger. In the late 60’s, plans were composed for the crippled New York Central Railroad showing a crudely designed Modernist skyscraper sprouting off the roof of Grand Central.50 The railroad, in dire need of a new income source to recuperate depleted operating revenue, proposed to construct the building directly over the Beaux Arts station, the tower and the terminal’s style clashing awkwardly. With the demolition of Pennsylvania Station fresh in the minds of citizens, determined opposition rallies were held, often with the attendance of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and soon the Landmarks Law was put to one of its first major tests.51

The Landmarks Preservation Committee, established by the Landmarks Law, added Grand Central Terminal to the landmarks list in 1966.52 The ramifications of this act meant the committee now held sway over any development which would affect Grand Central Terminal itself or its immediate surroundings.53 Once renderings were released, the committee, performing the duty required of it, examined the prospects of the new construction, and in 1969, refused to allow the construction of the tower, citing, “In its opinion the new office tower would degrade the architectural and aesthetic qualities of Grand Central.”54 As the Penn-Central Railroad (the New York Central merged with the Pennsylvania in 1968 to avoid faltering)55 swayed dangerously between the black and insolvency, it believed the situation it now found itself in was nothing less than a taking, and thus unconstitutional—the railroad filed suit.56

The Supreme Court of New York County took up “Penn-Central v. City of New York” in the early 1970s, hearing the arguments from both sides of the debate. In 1975, the court would eventually rule in favour of Penn-Central, agreeing the city held no authority over private land, thus rendering the Landmarks Law an exercise in futility.57 However, the decision was overturned by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court,
which reinforced the city’s ability to landmark and preserve important monuments.58 Brought to the Court of Appeals in 1977 by the Penn-Central, a court which once again favoured New York City’s right to landmark, the railroad supported taking the case to the United States Supreme Court as a final resolution to the matter, confident in their argument that no government entity has any rightful claim over the use of private property. The Supreme Court, on June 26th, 1978, failed to agree.59 Upholding New York City’s ability to landmark and preserve structures it feels significant by a healthy 6-3 vote, Justice William Brennan stated the decision of the court:

“The Landmarks Law, which does not interfere with the terminal’s present uses or prevent Penn- Central from realizing a ‘reasonable return’ on its investment, does not impose the drastic limitations on appellants’ ability to use the air rights above the terminal that appellants claim, for, on this record, there is no showing that a smaller, harmonizing, structure would not be authorized.”60

The decision at last gave the preservation movement legislation with teeth. Not only was New York and its citizens granted the unique ability to landmark important private structures through the Landmarks Law, it was now federally supported. As long as there was a careful eye monitoring the sites New Yorkers felt were needed to maintain the character of the city, a situation like that of the appalling demolition of the great Pennsylvania Station—an act of vandalism—would never occur again. Of course, even today meaningful structures are destroyed in the sadly apathetic city. However, In lieu of these ever-present difficulties facing the transforming metropolis, the law continues to protect the landmarked structures of the city, while valiantly keeping the flame of Pennsylvania Station’s spirit and legacy burning.

Some theorize the loss of Pennsylvania Station was a necessary tragedy, for without this extraordinary example of undeserved destruction in one of the most important cities in the world, even more significant structures, or possibly entire neighborhoods, would have been lost through ‘progressivism’ and commercialism. This is certainly true. Pennsylvania Station’s demolition and subsequent court proceedings, which supported preservationist principles, established a sturdy precedent across the entire United States. With respect to the Pacific Northwest, if Pennsylvania Station’s ultimate and untimely destruction had not taken place, entire communities would have been eradicated by the wrecker’s ball ideology so predominate in the 1960s and 1970s. We can make a direct and undeniable connection between Penn Station and the continued physical existence of locales such as Pioneer Square in Seattle and the Warehouse District of Tacoma. Particularly with the city on deep Commencement Bay, Tacoma’s handsome Union Station and surrounding Warehouse District were saved from the wrecker’s ball as it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places before any regrettable action took place—a program created due to the backlash from Pennsylvania Station’s demise in 1966.61 The area, a compact neighborhood of century old multi-story red-brick factory buildings that construct a handsome and staid coherence through the shared use of brick design, cast iron storefronts and cornices, and the heavy use of the arch, is a picturesque display of the former wonders of American architecture—standards of design the nation has not been able to readily replicate or match since.

From the era of Penn Station’s destruction, when preservation was not often considered as a method of urban improvement, the theories behind the ideology has expanded from simply the saving of a structure to a much more holistic approach—conservation. To Calthorpe and Fulton, authors of the essay Designing the Region Is Designing the Neighborhood,“Conservation implies many things beyond husbanding resources and protecting natural systems; it implies preserving and restoring the cultural, historic, and architectural assets of a place as well.”62 Tacoma’s Union Station District is emblematic of this broader approach to preservation, and when being studied for renewal (the good kind), the researchers focused on more than esthetic qualities. According to the 1979 rehabilitation study on the station, “Tacoma’s Union Depot District is one of the oldest urban industrial areas still standing in the Northwest. As the terminus for the Northern Pacific [Railroad], the district played a critical role in the development of the entire northwest region. The financial and commercial dominance of Tacoma during the railroad era is reflected in the building environment still surrounding Union Station.”63 Continuing with the description, “Although the district remains largely intact, the bustle of the railroad era is gone…Driving or walking north along Pacific Avenue towards downtown Tacoma, the visitor sees a deserted district.”64 To our great fortune, as opposed to leveling the district for parking or future commercial interests, citizens invested in the area, and on April 2, 1980, had it protected through historic registration.65 Slowly, it recovered. In Tacoma, this historic district is now home to a thriving scholastic, artistic and business community, all housed in buildings that were rehabbed and reused as opposed to knocked down. We are extraordinarily lucky to able to experience such a unique locale, for this very precious commodity was once seriously threatened. We owe our older neighbors an enormous debt of gratitude for their resistance to destroying our collective heritage.

On a sorrowful final note, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the might railroad which commissioned the deconstruction of one of New York City’s grand entrance-ways, went bankrupt soon after the demolition of the station. The fledgling railroad’s hope for continued survival, the demolition of Pennsylvania Station for its valuable land, would become nothing more than a corporate pipe dream. In a heartbreaking blow to the activists who had tried to save the ill fated station while it was in its deathbed, the demolition had officially become futile.


* * * * * *










Footnotes

1 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 94.
2 Bain, David H. Empire Express. 545.
3 Nock, Oswald S. Railways of the USA. 31.
4 Klein, Aaron E. New York Central. 45.
5 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 82-83.
6 Ibid.
7 Jacobs, 82-84.
8 Nock, Oswald S. Railways of the USA. 33.
9 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 84-92.
10 Ibid.
11 Nock, 33.
12 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 84.
13 Jacobs, 85-87.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 85-87.
17 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 85-87.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 84-88.
23 Ibid.
24 Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 84-88.
25 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 19,50.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 19,50.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 22.
32 Plosky,. 27.
33 Plosky,. 24.
34 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 19-25.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Plosky, 49.
39 Ablarc. “Sixties Demolitions,” 4-9.
40 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 41-45.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Plosky, 49.
44 Sitte, Camillo. "The Art of Building Cities." 429.
45 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 47.
46 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 53-54.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 55-56.
50 Ibid.
51 McFadden, Robert D. "Jackie, New Yorker; Friends Recall a Fighter for Her City." New York Times. 1994.
52 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 56-57.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Plosky, Eric J. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station. 56-57.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 United States. National Park Service. National Register of Historic Places.
62 Calthorpe, Peter, and William Fulton. "Designing the Region is Designing the Region." 346.
63 United States. National Park Service. Department of the Interior. Tacoma: the Union Depot District. 14.
64 Ibid.
65 United States. National Park Service. National Register of Historic Places.





Bibliography



Ablarc. “Sixties Demolitions.” Wired New York. 15 Aug. 2005 18 Oct. 2006
<http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7009&highlight=sixties+demolitions>.
Bain, David H. Empire Express. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. 545.
Calthorpe, Peter, and William Fulton. "Designing the Region is Designing the Region." The City Reader. New
York: Routledge, 2007. 344-347.
Jacobs, Timothy. The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Greenwich, CT: Brompton Books Corp., 1988.
24-111
Klein, Aaron E. New York Central. Greenwich, CT: Brompton Books Corp., 1985. 42-85.
McFadden, Robert D. "Jackie, New Yorker; Friends Recall a Fighter for Her City." New York Times 22 May
1994.02 Dec. 2007 <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E7DF1138F931A15756C0A9629582 60>.
Nock, Oswald S. Railways of the USA. New York: Hastings House, 1979. 29-41.
Plosky, Eric J., comp. The Fall and Rise of Pennsylvania Station: Changing Attitudes Toward Historic
Preservation in New York City. Feb. 2000. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 19 Oct. 2006.
< http://subjectverb.com/www/writing/thesis.pdf>
Sitte, Camillo. "The Art of Building Cities." The City Reader. New York: Routledge, 2007. 428-437.
Stover, John F. American Railroads. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 167-244.
Tayler, Arthur. Illustrated History of North American Railroads. Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, Inc., 1996.
81-144
United States. National Park Service. Department of the Interior. Tacoma: the Union Depot District. 1979. 02
Dec. 2007.
United States. National Park Service. National Register of Historic Places. 02 Dec. 2007

[Alonzo-ny]

Pillar after pillar marching all the way along 32nd Street is pretty damned impressive from my POV.

I guess impressive is the wrong word, I should have said unique or maybe even interesting. It would be quite impressive but one must only make a short walk to the Farley post office to see another facade of columns.

The interior space though was one of a kind.

[GVNY]

Pennsylvania Station, here (http://aycu37.webshots.com/image/41996/2005726325758414214_rs.jpg).

Larger version of a photograph above.

[Lowell Jackson]

I enjoyed the really great pics of Penn Station. I have been looking (without success) for the Floor Plans and dimensions of the station. Where was the restaurant etc. How big was the Waiting Room etc.
Could you possibly direct me to website that has this information.


Thank you very much in advance.


Lowell Jackson

[ManhattanKnight]

Here you go:

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/2748/pennastationplanqn1.jpg

McKim Mead & White, A Monograph of the Works of McKim Mead & White 1879-1915. New Edition Four Vols. in One. Benjamin Blom New York 1973. Arno Press, 1977 (Plate 300).

[ablarc]

Great job, GVNY! An enthralling read!

[GVNY]

Thanks Ablarc! From you, I feel this to be a very prestigious complement.

Unfortunately, I believe the essay lost quite a bit of punch when I had to take it apart and post it onto WiredNY, but I am pleased you still enjoyed it.

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/2544/dfdfdggqm5.jpg

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/3549/pennsylvaniastationee1.jpg

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/4968/fghfghfghfghcn0.jpg

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/4221/fhgfgfgfghfgcx4.jpg

[TREPYE]

The Deconstruction of





Pennsylvania Station: New York’s Great Shame

By: GVNY




The read was very interesting and well written GNV, thanks :). In conjuction with the pictures one cannot help but clentch their jaws in anger at points during the read.



One thing that I have always wanted to know is who is responsible, not what coporation or group but rather who was the person (CEO, developer, politician or other) who made the ultimate call to do this astocity to NYC, for they shall be teh visual definition of development evil.

[Alonzo-ny]

Thanks Ablarc! From you, I feel this to be a very prestigious complement.

Unfortunately, I believe the essay lost quite a bit of punch when I had to take it apart and post it onto WiredNY, but I am pleased you still enjoyed it.



Please feel free to open a thread and post the entire essay, its not against the rules.

[mykingdomlisa]

so many nice pic here , don't miss it or feel pity
www.paintingmax.com (http://www.paintingmax.com)

[MidtownGuy]

^spam
please remove. Mykingdomlisa should be banned.

[The Benniest]

^spam
please remove. Mykingdomlisa should be banned.
Haha! ...although I agree. :)

Anyways...may I ask why Pennsylvania Station was torn down?

[lofter1]

Too big, too old, too combersome ...

and the railroad company needed money and wanted to build there

[The Benniest]

Ooh. Yes, from the pictures that I saw, I can see that it was huuge.

What did the railroad put there?

[lofter1]

Benniest: Do you even bother to try an read the thread? Everything you ask is already answered in this thread ... take some time to take a look.

[GVNY]

One thing that I have always wanted to know is who is responsible, not what coporation or group but rather who was the person (CEO, developer, politician or other) who made the ultimate call to do this astocity to NYC, for they shall be teh visual definition of development evil.



The Pennsylvania Station deconstruction was of course due to an entanglement of interests ($$$) revolving around multiple powerful people, thus there really are no scapegoats. It was the fault of a lot of people, including all of New York City and its environs.

But, ultimately, some blame must be placed onto the corporate heads of the faltering Pennsylvania Railroad for allowing the ruination of the classically serene interior with Tischy's Modernist ticket counter (James M. Symes, president), and permitting the station's placement onto the real estate market and ensuring demolition (Allen J. Greenough, president, and James M. Symes, chief executive officer).

[GVNY]

Many people are angered at MSG, Inc., for jumping at the opportunity to build a new garden over Pennsylvania Station, but 'they' did what any normal individual, family or company would do in a similar situation: act on a once-in-a-lifetime circumstance and acquire an impossibly safe and financially rewarding investment.

[ablarc]

I like to write--a lot,
Obviously.


yes--when I am ill.
Hope you're better now, but I hope you keep writing.


It most certainly clears my mind and permits me to stay focused. I specifically write essays, as they allow me to hone my writing skills...hopefully it reads the least bit professionally.
When you write something as well-researched as this, it becomes airtight; that makes it difficult or impossible to argue with.


Enjoy!
I did.

[pianoman11686]

The Pennsylvania Station deconstruction was of course due to an entanglement of interests ($$$) revolving around multiple powerful people, thus there really are no scapegoats. It was the fault of a lot of people, including all of New York City and its environs.

But, ultimately, some blame must be placed onto the corporate heads of the faltering Pennsylvania Railroad...

There are many reasons, and many scapegoats. For starters, anyone who helped perpetuate the national downfall of railroads since their peak in the early 20th century.

[ablarc]

Here's something I can correct, GVNY: they disassembled Penn Station so meticulously that I recall they were still at it in late 1964 --and probably somewhat into 1965.

[The Benniest]

Benniest: Do you even bother to try an read the thread? Everything you ask is already answered in this thread ... take some time to take a look.
Very sorry. I feel like a complete idiot due to there was an actual picture of what it was replaced with. :confused: I'll be sure to actually "read" the threads now.

-ben

[Radiohead]

Here's something I can correct, GVNY: they disassembled Penn Station so meticulously that I recall they were still at it in late 1964 --and probably somewhat into 1965.

I had read somewhere that the dismantling of Penn Station lasted from 1963-66.

[ablarc]

Well, that confirms what I remember --plus some.

It sure took a long time. They removed the columns one by one without smashing them. Stored them in New Jersey, where --like Jimmy Hoffa-- they eventually vanished.

[Radiohead]

Well, that confirms what I remember --plus some.

It sure took a long time. They removed the columns one by one without smashing them. Stored them in New Jersey, where --like Jimmy Hoffa-- they eventually vanished.

Hmmm...maybe they're buried under Giants Stadium:)

[pochill]

The picture I found most interesting is the on with the Ground Bus Station. Where exactly was that located? I work in the area and always walk around trying to place things the way they were and I would like to see where it was.

[ManhattanKnight]

The photo that got your attention was taken by Bernice Abbott in 1936 and shows the Greyhound Bus Station against the background of the north (33rd Street) side of Pennsylvania Station. The bus station occupied part of the block bounded by 33rd-34th Streets and 7th-8th Avenues, most of which is now filled by the 1 Penn Plaza office building. Please shed a tear whenever passing by 1PP.

[williamegan]

Firstly, what fantastic photographs of an amazing building. I am seeking information and/or photographs relating to William H. "Big Bill" Egan, the first Station Master from 1910 until circa 1935 (He died in 1943.) Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Also, does anyone have photographs of the Station Master's office and know the location during the period 1910-1940?

[Travis]

What happened to those eagle sculptures?


Also, with the benefit of hindsight, what might Penn Railroad have done to become profitable without completely demolishing this station? Or was it a futile battle to begin with?

[Bob]

All of my architecture books are still at my (unsold) house on Long Island, so I don't have ready reference to what I have concerning Penn Station. I do know that some of the eagles were SAVED and moved around the country.

I believe one is outside the existing Penn Station. Another MAY be at Flushing Meadow Park. And I vaguely recall that another was moved to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Perhaps someone here can confirm some of this?

It will interest you to know that part of one of destroyed Day/Night sculptures from Penn Station resides in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum.

(PS - Long time viewers of WNY will note that your humble senior WNY member, Bob from Scottsdale, refrained from making a smarmy, cornball remark here about the "peaceful easy feeling" Eagles. )

[lofter1]

Penn's eagles (http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/Penn%20Station/penn.html)

(Pics at link ^^^ )

Lorraine B. Diehl, in her comprehensive history of Penn Station, The Late Great Pennsylvania Station:, writes:

... the first of the six stone eagles that guarded the entrance was coaxed from its aerie and lowered to the ground. The captive bird was surrounded by a group of officials wearing hard hats. They clustered about their trophy and smiled for photographers. Once the servants of the sun, symbols of immortality, the stone birds that had perched atop the station now squatted on a city street, penned in by sawhorses as their station came down around them.

In all there were twenty-two eagles crowning the station, each weighing fifty-seven hundred pounds, each given its form by the noted sculptor Adolph A. Weinman...

Two of the stone eagles were rescued and placed outside the new entrance.

This Penn Station eagle has found its way to the courtyard of a building on 3rd Avenue near St. Marks Place. (Note: This is a Cooper Union Building on the north side of Astor Place, sharing the block with the big Starbucks on the corner)

The Philadelphia eagles: Two of the Penn Station eagles have made their way to the western end of the Market Street bridge over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, PA. photos: Rochelle Rabin

Two more, meanwhile, flank the entrance to the main building at the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, Long Island.

[Dagrecco82]

Quite sad...:(

[Margot]

Demolition


:confused:

Incredible collection of photos. I have a big collection myself, including ones I had printed from the large-format negatives at the Landmarks Preservation Commission nearly 20 years ago, but they don't span the decades like these.

It is easy to get nostalgic about a monumental structure you don't remember. In reality Penn Station in its last days was just like other big-city train stations: dirty, neglected, largely infested with bums, transients, largely nonwhite vagrants, with little of a wholesome class of people to redeem it. The whole place stank of lavatory disinfectant. When they wanted to get rid of Penn Station, they were really doing a Robert Moses—hoping to cleanse the city of those unforunate classes and types of people who presented an eyesore.

It was easier to tear down Penn Station than to clean it up. Just the political reality of the time.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I doubt it would have made a difference in public attitude if the building was squeaky clean.

The railroad was bleeding money; passenger rail travel was out of favor; and preservation was a minority opinion. Out with the old; in with the new.

A decade later, Grand Central Terminal was similarly smelly and infested with bums, and the city was in greater economic distress. But public opinion had begun to change.

[ablarc]

Also, the architectural style was at the age when styles go out of favor.

In Boston, few rise to defend City Hall against calls for its demolition --and the ones who do are ovious eggheads. Brutalism is at its nadir of popularity, and the building is dirty. What do you expect?

The economic downturn is helping keep it alive; there are no funds for a new building. If it can survive till Brutalism becomes an object of veneration among the soi-disant cognoscenti...

[lofter1]

To really preserve + save the Brutalist MSG (Penn's replacement) would mean that The Garden would have to be stripped of all the exterior additions (pimples and carbuncles) which have been added over the years.

In its pure & original cylindrical form MSG held some interest. But now it's an ugly mess.

[Radiohead]

"But now it's an ugly mess".

As is a team that currently occupies it
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/25/New_York_Knicks_logo.svg/243px-New_York_Knicks_logo.svg.png


One of the most significant architectural assets of the Garden is it's descending roof, which is unlike any other professional sports arena
http://www.collegehoopsjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/madison-square-garden.jpg

http://www.israelnewsagency.com/MadisonSquareGarden.jpg

I agree Lofter that the current garden exterior is an eyesore, which is sad considering the majestic place that stood on this site before (which also was befelled by neglect on a much larger, almost criminal scale). Most have probably already seen the future interior renovations HERE (http://www.msg.com/renovation/). But I haven't seen much on any exterior plans. Hopefully any exterior renovations will retain the cylindrical shape that so defines it.

[ablarc]

There'll never be a new Penn Station, will there?

[ZippyTheChimp]

With the MSG bowl pressing down on the station, there's no way to open it up. So, in that sense, there'll be no new Penn Station.

[ablarc]

Maybe they could take away their tax exemption?

[ZippyTheChimp]

Well, there's no incentive for the city to continue with the exemption, but that's after the fact.

I was hoping for Bernie Madoff.

The whole thing is very depressing.

[Merry]

August 24, 2009

A Shout-Out from ‘Mad Men’ to Ada Louise Huxtable

By Dave Itzkoff

How thoroughly versed is the “Mad Men” (http://tv.nytimes.com/show/180120/Mad-Men/overview) writing team in the history of New York? If you’ve seen Sunday night’s episode (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/mad-men-the-plans-the-plans-the-plans-you-make/), you’ll recall it started with a tense meeting between Pete Campbell and Paul Kinsey and executives from Madison Square Garden, who hope that the city’s denizens will warm to their plans to demolish Penn Station and replace it with a new entertainment arena. (Wonder how that turned out?) Among the negative responses to the plan that the executives discuss is an article from The New York Times written by Ada Louise Huxtable (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/nyregion/thecity/09huxt.html), the future Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic.

The article cited in this scene, called “How to Kill a City,” really did run in The Times on May 5, 1963, following the City Planning Committee’s decision that January to tear down Penn Station, and yes, Ms. Huxtable’s commentary really was that pointed. (“It is a poor society indeed,” she wrote, “that can’t pay for these amenities; that has no money for anything except expressways to rush people out of our dull and deteriorating cities.”)

Read Ada Louise Huxtable’s 1963 article “Architecture: How to Kill a City” here (.pdf). (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/arts/madmen.pdf)

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/a-shout-out-from-mad-men-to-ada-louise-huxtable/

[stache]

I'm cross posting this thread here in case any of our friends have not yet seen it -

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19096

[MidtownGuy]

Wow, the Huxtable piece was definitely worth reading in its entirety.
The attitudes she discusses are even worse today.

[Merry]

The end of Penn Station

October 14th 2009

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/10/14/alg_penn_station_clock.jpg
Pennsylvania Station in NYC jammed with people during the Thanksgiving holiday.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/10/14/amd_penn_station_eagle.jpg
Pennsylvania Station workmen Thomas Goodfellow
and Irving Mitchell with J. Benton Jones.

New York was a town that had never been much obsessed with a sense of permanence and demolition crews were routinely reducing splendid old buildings to rubble when, in early 1962, Mayor Robert Wagner created the Landmarks Preservation Commission to protect “structures and areas of historic of esthetic importance.”

But by then it was already too late to save Pennsylvania Station (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Penn+Station), and many blamed Wagner for having been insufficiently attentive to the city’s save-the-station activists as they protested the grand old lady’s imminent demise.

The Pennsylvania Railroad had for years wanted this costly white elephant off its hands, and now the Pennsy had signed an agreement with the people who were building a new Madison Square Garden (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Madison+Square+Garden) and there was no longer anything to be done for Charles McKim (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Charles+McKim)’s neoclassic masterwork, which began falling to the wrecking ball in October 1963.

SHAME, read the signs carried by the silent marchers as demolition began.

“In the years to come,” mourned commission director James Van Derpool, “we will be consumed with regret for allowing this supreme example of the architecture of the period to be destroyed.”

He was right.

Meanwhile, directly as a result of the Penn Station tragedy, the City Council soon undertook to pass legislation giving some measure of official standing to the landmarks board’s recommendations.

But Penn Station’s proud granite columns already lay in pieces in New Jersey’s Secaucus Meadows, where they had been dumped as landfill.


http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/14/2009-10-14_the_end_of_penn_station.html

[Radiohead]

This is a great video on the old station. Best viewed in HD/fullscreen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOzH02Pko4w

[lofter1]

Grrreeeaat ^ :D

[BrooklynRider]

Very enjoyable

[rp23g7]

Wish I could have seen the place before they demolished it. When we were there the tour guide people (what do they know) said they were going to make the post office the new Penn Station.

[brucebelltours]

In Toronto we have an extraordinary building called Commerce Court built in c1930 and later redeveloped in the 1970's. The main banking hall was also modeled like Penn Station was, after ancient Rome's Baths of Caracalla. While Toronto lost thousands of buildings during the urban renewal phase of the mid 20th century the Bank of Commerce was saved and is nothing short of spectacular, much like Penn Station was.

[brucebelltours]

Here are some more pics of the ceiling of the Bank of Commerce in Toronto, like Penn Station it too was modeled after Rome's Baths of Caracalla

[lofter1]

Gorgeous.

But please stop ;) .

You're making me tear up over what we lost.

[brianac]

Gorgeous.

But please stop ;) .

You're making me tear up over what we lost.


http://www.youtube.com/user/bryson217#p/u/3/-41Eh7fnjO0

[infoshare]

Great photos. There need be only one simple criterion for the automatic landmarking of any building: Guastavino Tile Work (http://www.vertical-access.com/guastavino.html).

http://www.vertical-access.com/guastavino.html

[lofter1]

The 31 page official booklet published July 1910 (http://books.google.com/books?id=sWZLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22the+New+York+Improvement+and+Tunnel+Extensio n%22&source=bl&ots=PROUj0LG0q&sig=z4Hpz7fbJOmdo4nq3AvtjzM_WxY&hl=en&ei=Nla8TJmrFISClAfR7-GqCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) (with 23 photographs) for opening of the original Penn Station on September 8, 1910 via Google Books, as noted in a NY Times article (http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9403E3D91239E433A2575AC2A96E9C946196D6CF) from August 29, 1910 chronicling the opening of the station:

The New York Improvement and Tunnel Extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad

Some shots back when it was pristine ...

Along Seventh Avenue, with the hole for
the Pennsylvania Hotel to the east:

11188

The Main Waiting Room:

11190

The Concourse looking towards 33rd Street:

11187

Track level:

11189

Exits at 33rd Street:

11192

Hackensack Portals of the Bergen Hill Tunnel:

11191

[lofter1]

The entire 1910 booklet as posted at railfan (http://prr.railfan.net/documents/NewYorkImprovements.html/page1.jpg) (individual pages in jpg format).

[Fabrizio]

Here is the Hollywood sound-stage recreation of PennStation... quite something:

The Clock (MGM 1945) starring Robert Walker and Miss Judy Garland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC7-AJMS6Qg

Stay for the ride up 5th Avenue... and take a look at the gorgeous store fronts.

[Merry]

Review> Penn Station's History Lesson

Exhibition explores the legacy of New York's lost Beaux Arts landmark and ponders the site's future.

Phil Patton

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/image/penn_station_03.jpg
1958 photo of 'the clamshell,' an aluminum and steel canopy over Penn Station's electronic ticketing area
designed by architect Lester Tichy, who was a protege of Raymond Loewy.

Like Troy, Pennsylvania Station is best known for its destruction. “New York City has never got over tearing down Penn Station,” observed the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose name will someday go on its planned successor, in the James Farley Post Office building next door.

Famously, photographs showed statues dumped in New Jersey swamps. Ada Louise Huxtable may have gotten a little carried away but reflected the popular mood when she declared that “tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man.” But surely the loss of the station in 1963 remains a primal cultural wound in New York City and a symbol for a wider loss of public space and public planning. It marked the end of innocence and beginning of knowledge, similar to if not as profound as the death of President Kennedy later that year. The story is familiar to everyone literate about architecture: Penn Station died so that other old buildings could live, so that landmarks commissions and preservation movements could flourish.

But there is more to the story as we are reminded by a new exhibit called “The Once and Future Pennsylvania Station” at the Transit Museum’s Annex and Store in Grand Central Terminal. (Check the maps and guides to find the spot.) The small show is made up of a couple of rooms of photographs, artifacts such as a great milky spherical light fixture left from the station, and a few video clips, including a brief sound clip of Philip Johnson and others protesting the station’s destruction.

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_05.jpg (http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_05.jpg)

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_04.jpg (http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_04.jpg)
The soaring glass ceiling of Penn Station's Central Waiting Room (top) and an aerial view of the beaux Arts
Station inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla (bottom).

New York’s great Beaux Arts Monuments are all around a century old—Grand Central’s big birthday comes up in 2013, the Public Library’s this spring; and last year would have been the 100th for Penn Station, which barely made it to age 50.

Inspired by the Baths of Caracalla, the station was conceived to join the transcontinental lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad with those of the Long Island Railroad. It was known not just for its soaring concourse and waiting room with arched glass roof but also for heroic sculpture and murals by Jules Guerin. However, the station was the result of planning, engineering, and building of infrastructure. It is hard now to grasp that to cross the Hudson River—a full mile wide—trains were once ferried on huge barges. To make the station possible trains had to be electrified and new tunneling techniques developed.

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_01.jpg
Patriotic photomurals designed by Raymond Loewy adorned the west wall of the Central Waiting Room in 1943.

The show suggests something else. A wall caption quotes historian Hilary Ballon: “Pennsylvania station embodied the imperial grandeur and self-confidence of America at the turn of the century, a symbol of imperial confidence.” Today, by contrast, one sees long lines of passengers waiting outside the Farley postal building for buses, huddling against the cold like a Depression soup line. They are a symbol, too.

The station was a great piece of architecture, but was it a great piece of city planning? In addition to a close reading of some of the histories of the station, the show also invites comparisons between Penn Station and Grand Central as urbanism. At Grand Central, the show points out, the New York Central and its planners profited from rights to the space above the station, and the junction of commuter rail lines and subway helped turn the station into the anchor of a commercial neighborhood. Not so over on Eighth Avenue, where Penn Station had to wait eight years before the Westside IRT arrived. Yes, rail traffic dropped steeply after World War II and the arrival of intercity airplane service. But stranded far west, almost like the current Javits Center, Penn Station was never knitted into a vital commercial area. Ultimately, the value of the land above the tracks rose: what replaced the station building was the huge drum of Madison Square Garden so that Mick Jagger and Walt “Clyde” Frazier could cavort in the concourse space once transfixed by sunbeams.

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_02.jpg (http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_02.jpg)

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_06.jpg (http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/penn_station_06.jpg)
An eagle removed from Penn Station's facade during demolition in 1963 (top) and demolition debris
being removed from the site (bottom).

The parable of Penn Station has long been read simply as a cautionary tale about the need to save the grandly-built past. To this lesson might be added: plan well when you build.

The show also includes a look at current plans for the much-revised Moynihan Station in the Farley post office. The plan for the new station, by David Childs of Skidmore Owings Merrill, calls for a large interior space under glass. But the future station, suggested by the show’s title, needs to be part of a wider plan. Without improvements in the tunnels that bring trains to the city and to the wider train system, it risks becoming little more than a memorial to the old station and a memento of what might have been.

http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=5247

[Don31]

Great stuff everyone, thanks for sharing. Ada Louise Huxtable's quote is probably my favorite quote of all time......

[brucebelltours]

I just saw a terrific movie on TCM called DEAR HEART (1964) staring Glenn Ford and Geraldine Page which had 2 scenes shot in magnificent Great Hall of the former Penn Station, just before it was demolished. The opening scene has Geraldine Page's character coming to New York via Penn Station and in the background you can see the big clock and the intricate iron work of the ceiling. The final scene in the movie has Glenn Ford descending the massive staircase where you can see a large mural painting on the wall and when the camera pulls away you can see just how vast the former Penn Station was.
Another great movie where you can see Penn Station's interior is the 1955 Marilyn Monroe movie Seven Year Itch and in An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant you can see the exterior in the background just before Deborah Kerr gets hit by the taxi cab. Does anybody know other movies where Penn Station can be seen?

[ttk]

The Hitchcock classic "Strangers on a Train" has an fine sequence of the south taxiway and the main hall.

[GordonGecko]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOzH02Pko4w

[marvelfannumber1]

Do there exist any color pictures of the old penn station :confused:

[Don31]

Do there exist any color pictures of the old penn station :confused:

Sure, I'll take a look in my files. There are plenty.

[Merry]

A Bus Terminal, Overshadowed and Unmourned

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/11/06/realestate/06STREET-1/streets-1-popup.jpg

THE demolition of Pennsylvania Station in 1963 is still an open sore. People who weren’t even alive then burn with indignation; it’s a kind of permanent ache. But is there no one to mourn the sleek little Greyhound bus station of 1935?

On 33rd Street just north of Penn Station, the bus depot might seem to have sheltered competition for the Pennsylvania Railroad, but it was the railroad that built it. Railroads had been buying or establishing bus companies for years, both to offer transfer points for their passengers, and to stave off start-ups looking for new markets.

Bus stations in the 1920s and 1930s posed new problems for architects. In 1920s New York, a common solution was to fit them into a new building — like the Baltimore & Ohio’s bus station, on the ground floor of the 1930 Chanin Building, on Lexington and 42nd. The B & O was, as bus stations go, palatial. With a great double-height space, a forest of bronze torchiers and marble counters, it might have been a hotel lobby except that it had no rugs.

John C. Fistere, writing in 1930 in The Architectural Record, spelled out the requirements of the new building type. Internal windows overlooking the vehicle area were important, since most passengers still found bus transportation “somewhat of a mystery,” and were concerned with missing their trip. A separate baggage room was advisable since “the inconvenience which would result from giving the passengers their luggage immediately upon alighting is obvious.” Truly, bus travel has changed.

Greyhound was a consortium of different lines, including Pennsylvania Greyhound, half owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1935 the railroad cleared a through-block site just north of the station, from 33rd to 34th, for the new Pennsylvania Greyhound Bus Terminal.

The art moderne terminal, designed by the theater architect Thomas Lamb, was a swing-era reproach to the fusty grandeur of Penn Station across the street. The 33rd Street facade was plain, but Lamb put a showy rounded corner on the busy 34th Street side and faced the entire front with enameled steel panels in glossy blue, the company’s trademark color since the 1920s.

There was no baggage room, but apparently the riding public bore up under the hardship. At that time there were half a dozen small bus stations sprinkled over Manhattan.

The company advertised 40 round trips a day to Philadelphia at $3 each, and 18 departures to Los Angeles, for $76.05 round trip. In 1943 Greyhound began planning a replacement 14-story terminal, and acquired most of the city block from Eighth Avenue over to just short of Seventh.

But in 1945, the Port Authority proposed its own single consolidated bus terminal, at Eighth Avenue and 40th Street, saying that intercity bus traffic jammed the streets. Part of the plan was a rooftop landing strip, 500 feet long, for what the authority called “the flying bus of the future.”

By this time the modernistic Greyhound terminal was not just a stop for travelers, but the haunt of vagrants, delinquents and petty criminals. In 1947 a police inspector called it the worst spot in Midtown. Five years later two escapees from the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane waiting for a bus to Baltimore were caught by police officers with drawn guns.

Nonetheless, Greyhound resisted the Port Authority plan. It liked its central location just fine, and had no need to help small operators gain the advantage of a union terminal. The city retaliated by prohibiting any bus terminal expansion in Midtown. The Port Authority completed its big, bland terminal in 1950, counting on Greyhound’s eventual capitulation — it was the biggest dog by far among the carriers.

The standoff continued through the 1950s, and in 1958 Greyhound proposed using its block for a huge $10 million terminal, about half as big as Penn Station. The Port Authority yelped, and the project was finally put down in 1959.

The following year, a headline in The New York Times proclaimed: “Greyhound Bus Finds It’s in the Enemy Camp.” The bus, coming through the Lincoln Tunnel, had mindlessly followed a line of buses ... right into the Port Authority terminal. The authority was not taking prisoners, and let it go. Then, in 1962, Greyhound gave in and agreed to move its 200 daily buses to the terminal, for which it began paying an annual rent of $1.2 million. The days of easy train-to-bus transfer were over.

The architect Peter Samton recalls the terminal as a student traveler in the 1950s, but has no memory of it during the protests against the demolition of Penn Station in 1962, when he wired himself to a column. Lamb’s little gem survived at least until mid-1963, and probably later. Today One Penn Plaza, completed in the 1970s, stands on the block. Whenever it met its fate, the low blue terminal met it alone, and without public reaction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/realestate/the-west-30s-streetscapes-a-bus-terminal-overshadowed-and-unmourned.html?ref=realestate

[Don31]

Nicely done GVNY, good work!

[GordonGecko]

Out of curiousity, was the old New York Penn station's metal work at all like the current Newark Penn Station's metal structure?

http://www.resurgencecity.org/NPSribs.jpg

[eltodesukane]

It’s time to address the calamity that is Penn Station. By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/michael_kimmelman/index.html?inline=nyt-per) Published: February 8, 2012 (The New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/arts/design/a-proposal-for-penn-station-and-madison-square-garden.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28&pagewanted=all

Restore a Gateway to Dignity By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/michael_kimmelman/index.html?inline=nyt-per) February 8, 2012 (The New York Times)

It’s time to address the calamity that is Penn Station.
Nearly a half-century has passed since the destruction of the great 1910 station designed by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead & White, a “monumental act of vandalism,” as an editorial in The New York Times (http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB0D1EF93A59137B93C2AA178BD95F478685F9) called the demolition in 1963. A vast steel, travertine and granite railway palace of the people, the old Pennsylvania Station had declined by the end into a symbol of bygone Gilded Age opulence. It was replaced by Penn Plaza and Madison Square Garden, Modernist mediocrities, erected to serve real estate interests, with a new subterranean Penn Station entombed below.
Some 600,000 commuters, riding Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit, now suffer Penn Station every day. That makes it probably the busiest transit hub in the Western world, busier than Heathrow Airport in London, busier than Newark, La Guardia and Kennedy airports combined.
To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation.
What is the value of architecture? It can be measured, culturally, humanely and historically, in the gulf between these two places.
Long trumpeted as a solution to the blight that is Penn Station has been the plan, well more than a decade old, to transform the present James A. Farley Post Office, opposite Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue, into a new train hub. The project is named for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York senator who championed the idea before his death in 2003. It is a first step.
But the only way to fix Penn properly is to move Madison Square Garden.
Why? Because the open secret about the Moynihan plan is that Amtrak alone would move across Eighth Avenue. Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and the subways wouldn’t budge. And only 30,000 of those 600,000 people who use Penn Station each day take Amtrak, never mind all the subway riders passing through.
That’s right: 95 percent of commuters will still have to contend with Penn even when the Moynihan plan is realized.
It’s true that the Moynihan plan will eventually improve a few access routes to subways and commuter trains. But it will add no new tracks and have limited effect on the congestion and misery of Penn Station. New tracks aside, the challenge is at the bare minimum to bring light and air into this underground purgatory and, beyond that, to create for millions of people a new space worthy of New York, a civic hub in the spirit of the great demolished one, more attuned to the city’s aspirations and democratic ideals.
Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/metropolitan_transportation_authority/index.html?inline=nyt-org) are about to undertake yet another study of how best to accomplish this after the Moynihan plan is completed. Building a train hub that brings a little pleasure underground is possible, as Rem Koolhaas (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/rem_koolhaas/index.html?inline=nyt-per) demonstrated with his tram tunnel (http://oma.eu/projects/2004/souterrain-tram-tunnel) in The Hague. But that complex project, which took forever and overcame numerous political hurdles even in the Netherlands, is small and simple compared with Penn Station, where the Garden presents an insurmountable obstacle.
This is about more than tracks and trains and redecorating. It’s about social equity and New York’s ability to compete with other global capitals in the 21st century. We have become a city too cynical about big change, resigned to the impossibility of unraveling bureaucratic entanglements, beholden to private interests, inured to commercialism and compromise.
We depend on developers to improve neighborhoods, and at the same time we waste unconscionable amounts of public money on architectural follies like the much-delayed World Trade Center PATH station, which is projected, even after ground zero is fully developed, to serve only perhaps 60,000 riders and whose exploding cost is already approaching $4 billion, a scandal still waiting to dawn on New Yorkers.
Meanwhile infrastructural crises that affect millions of people a day drag on, among them our abysmal airports; noisy, erratic subways; lack of high-speed rail (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/high_speed_rail_projects/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier); and Penn Station. No other great city in the world would abide a station like it.
Janette Sadik-Khan (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/janette_sadikkhan/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the city’s transportation commissioner, told me the other day that she was looking at the potential traffic impact of a concept floated by, among others, Vishaan Chakrabarti, a planner and real estate professor at Columbia University. The idea would be to close 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues to automobile traffic, creating a pedestrian zone that would improve access to Penn Station and help with light and air. It may turn out to be the only practical move, in conjunction with the Moynihan project.
But here’s another thought.
In his State of the State address last month Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proposed (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/281944-sos-book.html#document/p9) redeveloping 18 acres on the Far West Side of Midtown occupied since the 1980s by the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. He announced that the Genting Group of Malaysia had agreed to pay $4 billion to build a new convention center, the country’s largest, at a racetrack casino hard by Kennedy Airport in Jamaica, Queens.
The proposal raises all sorts of issues, for Jamaica and Manhattan, which need to be carefully unpacked in due time. Among them, New York ought to demand direct train service linking Kennedy to Midtown in return for all those billions of dollars Genting has calculated it will rake in at the casino. As for the Javits site, the West Side is being rezoned and rebuilt for luxury apartment towers and enormous office buildings. It desperately needs more schools, green spaces, low- and mixed-income housing, a restoration of the street grid and enhancements to the waterfront, which the convention center has long blocked.
But demolishing the Javits Center also presents a possible solution to Penn Station.
The thought is: Move Madison Square Garden to the southern end of the Javits site, at 34th Street and 11th Avenue. That is a prime location in what is hoped to become the busy intersection of a new Midtown South. The state, in conjunction with the city, would provide the Garden’s owners with a turnkey, or at least a very generous, deal: a new riverfront arena, partly financed by the substantial air rights gained in return for acquiring the Garden’s present site.
The new arena, unlike the current Garden, would compete as an up-to-date sports and entertainment center with the one rising at Atlantic Yards (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/atlantic_yards_brooklyn/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) in Brooklyn. It would stand at the northern culmination of the completed High Line (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/high_line_nyc/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier), and at the doorstep of a redeveloped Hudson Yards, where the new extension of the No. 7 subway line from Times Square will stop. Generations of New York sports fans have attachments to the Garden, but it has been moved several times before. The present arena is a flimsy, aging eyesore, notwithstanding the millions that its owners have lately been pouring into refurbishment — money that would have been amortized by the time a prospective new arena could be made ready.
Why should the public subsidize a private arena? To serve the larger public good: the money would go toward improving the lives of millions of New Yorkers and others who use Penn Station. Both the city and state have legal sticks to compel the Garden to move, among them a special permit the city grants, and could decline to renew, which allows the Garden to operate at its present site. But that route carries its own costs, political and financial.
The idea of moving the Garden west has come up before. There was the evolving plan that died some years ago to build a new Jets football stadium and shift the Garden to Hudson Yards as part of a bid for the Olympics. The football stadium was a nonstarter for Midtown, but a multiuse arena like the Garden is not a football stadium. It can be a decent urban neighbor and built largely underground to preserve the streetscape.
Then there was the more elaborate notion that collapsed a few years ago of its own weight, along with the economy and the political career of Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The owner of the Garden and Cablevision, the Dolan family, was by various accounts on board with this idea, which entailed going into the back, or western side, of the present Farley Post Office — in effect moving the Garden behind the new Amtrak station when Farley becomes Moynihan.
Nonetheless skeptical about moving that one block away because so many Garden patrons enjoy going straight upstairs from the subways and commuter trains in Penn Station, the Garden’s owners might not be blamed for dismissing yet another proposal to move even farther west.
But the glamour of a new arena alongside the High Line, with the boon of the No. 7 extension and the added benefit of dedicated bus service from Penn Station to 34th Street and 11th Avenue, which Ms. Sadik-Khan said is in the works, suggest what’s possible.
I got a tour of Penn Station and the Farley Post Office the other day with Juliette Michaelson from the Regional Plan Association, which keeps tabs on the Moynihan project.
Phase 1, she said, should cost $267 million and take at least five or six years to complete. Bids have just come in. That phase will widen and lengthen pedestrian concourses in Penn Station to provide new exits and elevator access for overcrowded tracks. Rush-hour commuters need 10 to 12 minutes to reach faraway exits. The present station is an egregious firetrap. This phase will also provide new entrances to Penn Station from either side of the Farley Post Office staircase on Eighth Avenue.
Phase 2 will finally move Amtrak’s ticket offices and waiting rooms into an atrium in the Farley Post Office. I was surprised, and suspect other New Yorkers will be too, to realize that pedestrians entering this future Moynihan Station, unless they elect to go out of their way and climb the front steps to pass through what will remain a post office, will circulate in and out of street-level passageways on either side of the grand staircase.
The 1912 Post Office facade — also by McKim, Mead & White, with the “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom” inscription — will then become the face of Amtrak. That will restore a superficial measure of the dignity to railway travel that was lost in 1963 when the old Pennsylvania Station was torn down. But the experience for most people using the building will not be like the glory of moving through Grand Central or the old Penn Station. Aesthetically, a top-ranking state official confided to me in all seriousness, the Moynihan project aspires to be more like the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station in Secaucus, N.J.
Years ago the critic Ada Louise Huxtable noted (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30C12FD3E55117B93C6A8178CD85F42 8685F9) that at the turn of the last century the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Alexander Cassatt, wanted to build a hotel atop Penn Station to exploit valuable air rights. But his architect, McKim, talked him out of it. The railroad owed the city a “thoroughly and distinctly monumental gateway,” McKim argued. Idealism temporarily triumphed over commerce, until McKim’s great building, across several troubled decades, became an increasingly rundown emblem of urban glory and gave way to an architecture of gloomy pragmatism and moneyed interests.
There is historic justice in trying to rectify a crime committed a half-century ago that galvanized the architectural preservation movement. “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat,” is the familiar lament from Vincent J. Scully Jr., the Yale architectural historian, about the difference between the former and present Penn Stations.
But history moves on, and New York remains vibrant because it is not stuck in the past. The lesson to be gleaned from the destruction of the old Penn Station is about the importance of preserving McKim’s public-spirited ideal for urban splendor as much as it is about preserving venerable buildings.
And the argument to move the Garden now is about looking ahead toward a booming new West Side. A light-filled Penn Station, a monument to the city’s best self and biggest dreams, should become its gateway.