![]() “Instead, air travel became the glamorous way to get around, not trains.”įurthermore, the station didn’t really serve all its patrons well. “The station was built with the expectation that more and more people would be attracted to train travel,” explains Jonnes. The decline of old Penn Station can, in part, be blamed to the rise of other forms of transportation. However, the demand for rail travel didn’t hold out. When the station officially opened on August 29, 1910, The New York Times proclaimed that “it was the largest building in the world ever built at one time.” Included in the write-up was a projection of how the population of New York City area would balloon to 8 million by 1920-and that transportation infrastructure would need to keep up with the expected demand. The building appeared to be constructed from solid granite, but around 650 granite-clad steel columns supported the majority of the structure. The proportion and rhythm of Penn’s colonnaded facade was inspired by Bernini’s piazza at the Vatican and John Soane’s Bank of England. As Mosette Broderick expands in her book Triumvirate: McKim, Mead, & White, he also observed recently completed train stations in Europe. McKim’s design drew inspiration not just from Ancient Roman baths. The trio made up one of the most popular and important architectural firms of the Gilded Age, and securing McKim fit squarely within Pennsylvania Railroad’s standard of excellence. “It was a very, very seedy area-they cleared the entire section of land,” explains Jonnes.įor the station itself, many architects submitted designs, but there was a clear choice: Charles McKim of the prolific architectural firm McKim, Mead, & White. X20.Īfter Jacobs concluded that the tunnels could be constructed, the railroad acquired 28 acres of land in a neighborhood known as the Tenderloin. Interior of Pennsylvania Station under construction. Jonnes adds that conditions weren’t ideal when passengers made it to Manhattan: “They were met with total chaos at the busy port, which was unacceptable to the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was determined to get across the river.”Ī few solutions were bandied about, but Pennsylvania Railroad president Alexander Cassatt wanted to tunnel under the Hudson.Ĭassatt tapped Charles Jacobs, an English engineer who had previously constructed tunnels under New York City’s East River, to determine whether or not it was feasible to build beneath the Hudson. ![]() “The passengers had to disembark, get onto ferries, and come across the river.” “Trains stopped at the edge of the Hudson River in New Jersey,” says Jonnes. “It meant that they were always at the cutting edge-and that they were doing things with excellence,” explains historian Jill Jonnes, who is participating in a conversation this evening with architect Vishaan Chakrabarti about the history and future of Penn Station at the Museum of the City of New York.īut there was something standing in the way of the railroad providing truly excellent service into New York City: the Hudson River. The original station was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which billed itself around the turn of the 20th century as “the standard railroad of the world.” ![]() One descended onto sun-bathed train platforms beneath a canopy of iron and glass.īut just 54 years later, that Penn Station was demolished, replaced by the current transit hub that is undergoing a major overhaul due to its ineffective-if not downright unpleasant-design. ![]() The waiting room, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, had a coffered ceiling that soared 148 feet high. The building, which covered eight acres in midtown Manhattan, was an impressive Classical gateway to New York City. When Pennsylvania Station first opened in 1910, it was a far cry from the confusing maze of underground tunnels that it is today. Welcome back to Period Dramas, a weekly column that alternates between rounding up historic homes on the market and answering questions we’ve always had about older structures.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |