Penn Station and its great past (New York, Rome: real estate, lease, crime)
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I remember a past PBS documentary with someone like Pete Hamill saying, In the old Penn Station, we used to enter the city like gods - now we enter like rats.
Check out the photographs.
When the Old Penn Station Was Demolished, New York Lost Its Faith
Today’s version is humiliating and bewildering.
Michael Kimmelman
The building that opened in 1910 — its concourse longer than the nave of St. Peter’s in Rome, its creamy travertine quarried, like the ancient Colosseum’s, from Tivoli, its ceiling 138 feet high, its grand staircase nearly as wide as a basketball court — was a “beautiful Beaux Arts fortress,” as the architect Vishaan Chakrabarti has put it.
Inside and out, the building was meant to be uplifting and monumental — like the Parthenon on steroids — its train shed and waiting room a skylit symphony of almost overwhelming civic nobility, announcing the entrance to a modern metropolis.
You were around in 1910 to compare how useful it was originally?
Prior poster isn't wrong. Have to think like NYC leadership when the city was going broke, trains were vastly underutilized, and Penn Station was expensive to maintain. Along comes an offer to rebuild the underutilized station underground and construct a stadium and office tower above it.
don't bring back bad memories. it was crime against humanity with what happened to penn station. They probably should have built a hotel on top of it when they built it to bring down maintenance cost but that would have ruined it.
OTOH, I remember going to see the circus and the Lipizzaner horses (weird horse-loving aunt) at the original Madison Square Garden when I was really young. Quaint would be a generous description.
People; Penn Station is still there and very much useful. Only the above ground head house was demolished. Everything else from tracks to electircal power equipment or whatever is still there, and station functions as it did before MSG was built on top. Only difference is means of entering and leaving Penn Station.
While having a grand or whatever terminal/station building is all very well, that isn't the main purpose of such structures. Compared to New York Central's Grand Central Terminal the PRR's Penn Station while perhaps "beautiful", failed in many ways in terms of functionality.
GCT uses gentle sloping ramps for passengers, freight, luggage, etc... to move to and from train platforms. Penn Station used stairs, which even today still cause major problems in the flow of persons. Just as with the subways where stairs are used to get from platforms up and out of station. When too many people do so at same time it causes all sorts of traffic tie ups.
Building Penn Station has divided critics of PRR for decades. Some feel it gave the railroad a new lease on life and prolonged its survival until the end. Others say the huge sums spent were something the RR never recovered from and thus perhaps were part of reason PRR finally slid into red ink.
Only two passenger railroads in the prior century had direct access into Manhattan from the east, PRR and their arch rival New York Central. All other railroads relied up until their end (which for some wasn't until the 1950's or 1960's) the cumbersome ferry system that effectively meant taking a boat to or from New Jersey in order to board a train.
The one seat ride put PRR over in terms of luring the best passenger traffic as it attached Manhattan to the rest of nation via those North River tunnels. New York Central OTOH relied upon their mainline up the Hudson then crossing over along the Great Lakes to reach points east.
Fact that NEC including the North River tunnels and Penn Station are one of the most busy rail corridors in USA if not world proves PRR was right. What they couldn't have foreseen is how low rail roads would fall in USA before any action as taken to save.
The biggest fault was with Penn RR for ignoring the architects McKim Mead White who strongly recommended the building be built with the capacity to add an office or hotel tower above it some day. The Pennsy's attitude was too ballsy for its own good.
Also it's interesting when you compare Penn Station to Grand Central, as far as to where it was located, and it's impact and interaction with its neighborhood. Grand Central was a game changer for NY City, for city planning in general ("air rights"?). It replaced a railroad depot that cut the neighborhood in two, and made getting across midtown perilous for pedestrians and vehicles alike. The tracks were sunk below the streets which were rebuilt over them, making the terminal integral with the neighborhood.
But Penn Station was in a run down area, and stood like a monument all by itself, with little interaction with the city around it. Of course the railroad access was vital, but that was underground and didn't depend on whatever building stood above it. As a symbol, Penn Station simply wasn't loved enough in its day.
Interesting to know that Erie Railroad toyed with the idea of also building a terminal in Manhattan, so it's passengers wouldn't have to switch to ferryboats at Jersey City. It seems they were less financially able than the Penn to get it done.
So perhaps we would also have ended up with a great lost Erie Railroad Terminal to mourn!
The biggest fault was with Penn RR for ignoring the architects McKim Mead White who strongly recommended the building be built with the capacity to add an office or hotel tower above it some day. The Pennsy's attitude was too ballsy for its own good.
Also it's interesting when you compare Penn Station to Grand Central, as far as to where it was located, and it's impact and interaction with its neighborhood. Grand Central was a game changer for NY City, for city planning in general ("air rights"?). It replaced a railroad depot that cut the neighborhood in two, and made getting across midtown perilous for pedestrians and vehicles alike. The tracks were sunk below the streets which were rebuilt over them, making the terminal integral with the neighborhood.
But Penn Station was in a run down area, and stood like a monument all by itself, with little interaction with the city around it. Of course the railroad access was vital, but that was underground and didn't depend on whatever building stood above it. As a symbol, Penn Station simply wasn't loved enough in its day.
It was the designer of Grand Central Terminal who came up with and first to use "air rights". It was an idea of pure genius, and those real estate property rights/deals helped New York Central immensely. Even when Penn-Central went belly-up there was still plenty of mid-town RE to be sold off which helped pay offi creditors IIRC.
Few realize just how much mid-town RE sits over New York Central's yards.
Basically from 42nd Street north to about Saint Patrick's, bounded by Lexington to the east and Vanderbilt or Madison to west.
Grand Central Terminal is just that; the end of line for New York Central in Manhattan. Locomotives and cars have to be turned, cleaned, repair (minor to some limited major), stored (in a limited manner), etc... New York Central had other yards upstate as well.
For the PRR, Penn Station was just that; and trains continued out to Sunnyside yards where locomotives and cars were cleaned, repaired, turned, stored, etc....
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