Probably will be demolished to build 15 Penn Plaza.
K4sPRR:
Sure enough....Page 134, and bingo...There it was. I had completely forgot about that pic. in my book.
Quentin
1917 excerpt from Standard Corporation Service
The "Record & Guide," New York, Aug. 11, 1917, stated that the Prudential Insurance Co. of America had loaned to the Pennsylvania Terminal Real Estate Co. for five years at 5% $8,000.000 on the bulding now in course of construction, to be known as the Hotel Pennsylvania, which will occupy the entire block front on the east side of Seventh Ave., between 32d and 33d Streets, New York City, opposite the Pennsylvania Station. The Pennsylvania R. R. owns all the $3,000,000 capital stock of the Terminal Real Estate Co.
1919 excerpt from The Architectural Review
The sub-basement floor plan takes in the space which was partly pre-empted by the Pennsylvania Railroad and Long Island Railroad tunnels, which find their way into 32nd and 33d Streets at this level. There is an underground passage to the Pennsylvania Station at this level, reached from the hotel by a pair of elevators running to the main lobby, three floors above....
In designing the hotel for the same owners, the architects have studied to relate the two structures in scale and expression. Attention is called to the setting-back from the regular city building lines of both the station and the hotel to produce the effect of a plaza....
In order to relate the exterior of the building with the Pennsylvania Station opposite, the lower stories to a height equal to that of the station have been treated as a solid base faced with Indiana limestone and given a monumental character by an order of Roman Ionic pilasters. The walls between the pilasters are lightly rusticated and there is a story of ashlar above. The main entrance in the center of the Seventh Avenue facade is emphasized by a portico with six Ionic columns.
1919 excerpt from Electrical World magazine
Since service is the outstanding requirement of a hotel, one of the fundamental conditions laid down by the consulting engineer for the hotel was that a failure of the electric service must be practically impossible, and this end was attained by providing two independent sources of supply; namely, from the main power station of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Long Island City and from a generator in the hotel operated by steam purchased from the Pennsylvania Terminal. The first source can take care of all the requirements of the hotel, while the generator is able to provide enough energy for emergency lighting and power purposes....
Electricity from the Long Island City plant is received in the form of 11,000-volt, 60-cycle, three-phase alternating energy through a tunnel which terminates at a transformer room in the sub-basement of the hotel.
1921 excerpt from The Mutual Magazine (Mutual Beneficial Association of Pennsylvania Railroad Employees)
Brother J. William Wittekindt has been absent from our meetings for some time past on account of business in New York City, and along this line I mention that should any member desire a nice shoe cloth or any samples of Hotel Pennsylvania soap, towels, etc., J. W. W. will gladly accommodate you
.
A. J. Cassatt in bronze looked almost alive to me. He must have been some kind of saint, I thought, to become a statue like that.
Excerpt from 2007 article Tunnel Visionary by Samuel McCracken in Columbia Magazine.
"...Pennsylvania Station was superimposed on the heart of the now-vanished Tenderloin district, a world of cheap bars and brothels that stretched between 23rd and 42nd Streets on the West Side. There was much illegal vice in the Tenderloin, and Tammany Hall made sure that the law was not mocked there except at the established rates. Because Cassatt's project threatened a rich source of income, getting a franchise for the tunnels was a process that would have normally involved bribing a number of public officials, most notably the members of the Tammany-controlled Board of Aldermen. Cassatt was opposed to bribery; for him it was a genuine case of the principle and not the money. At the outset of his campaign, he had the support of the similarly high-minded Seth Low, who had recently descended from the presidency of Columbia to the mayoralty. But Low was defeated after a single term, leaving Cassatt to deal with a resurgent Tammany. He outwaited it, and got his franchise.
"The next problem facing the PRR was that it had to buy about 200 small parcels of land covering four blocks without letting the sellers know the depth of the buyer's pockets. Cassatt entrusted this task to Douglas Robinson, Theodore Roosevelt's brother-in-law. Robinson appears to have been equal to the task: He managed to acquire the roughly 28 acres on which Pennsylvania Station was to sit."
Looking west from 31st Street to 9th Ave. El
K4sPRR Modelcar, If you ever get a chance to look at a copy of the book The Late Great Pennsylvania Station by Lorraine B. Diehl there is a photograph of that flag during WWII on page 134. Do you also recall the huge posters of the faces of military men hanging near it?
Modelcar,
If you ever get a chance to look at a copy of the book The Late Great Pennsylvania Station by Lorraine B. Diehl there is a photograph of that flag during WWII on page 134. Do you also recall the huge posters of the faces of military men hanging near it?
I have that coffee table type book you mention of Lorraine B. Diehl. I've had it for some years, and perhaps forgot a pic. of said flag is in it. I'll certainly check it out.
I do not recall the huge posters.....The traffic in and thru the station at that time was overwhelming....It was wartime, and all kinds of military personnel filled the concourse and most all areas....It certainly left an impression on me {being pretty young then}, that I still have many memories of the experience. {Such as getting a chocolate ice cream cone as we were coming up from the track level to the concourse...
Enjoy seeing Wanswheel's pic's.. which are of GCT.
Grand Central Terminal in December 1941
Wanswheel:
Bingo.....!! Great job. My memory had it pretty accurate according to the painting you have found and posted. Even the ambience seems correct as I remember it. Subdued light in the great room and this mamoth beautiful flag was so impressive......It was moving ever so slowly in the moving air in the very high room....It was what this great country stood for at that dark time.....A perfect Icon to represent us all.
Great job in finding a rendition of it.
"Penn Station" by Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957)
It seems the 60 X 30-foot fluorescent American flag at the arch between the waiting room and the concourse was Raymond Loewy's idea. It weighed 200 pounds and was visible from 7th Ave., especially at night. According to Railway Age, "The flag lighted in this manner [ultraviolet floodlights] is highly effective in getting attention in the extreme dimmed-out conditions which now prevail in this great and bustling terminal. Few theaters which strive for striking effects by use of lights have ever achieved anything more dramatic than this Penn Station display."
Wanswheel....Boy, that would be great if you could locate a pic. of that flag. I was a bit young at the time, but I'm sure it was immense in size......
The ceiling height of that room was 150 ft. in height, and it was hanging from high up and extended down....I'm guessing it could have been possible 30, 40 ft. in length. Maybe more....
Maybe someone else might have some luck in finding one....Date would have been about Aug. 1942.
And I love your photos you posted.
Thanks for trying on the flag.
IN addition to Grand Central Terminal, we can be very glad that:
Chicago Union Station
LA Union Station
Washington Union Station
30th Street Station Philadelphia
have survived. I used the old Pennsylvania Station hundreds of times, I vastly prefered it to its replacement, even after some deterioriation. I would not say it was either better or worse the GCT. GCT had the problem that you were never quite sure unless you had prior experience whether your Poughkeepsie Express was going to leave from the upper or lower level. This required additional time before boarding the train.
I am very pleased Metro North and ConnDot have restored the New Haven station. A beautiful job. Anyone remember PC's use of the underpass to the platforms as the station?
Quentin, I tried to find a picture of the giant flag that you described but I could not.
Johnny, thank you for sending this thread to your wife. I hope she enjoys.
....As we sort thru memories of Penn Station, I'll add one more....A giant sized flag...{now, I have no idea how big}, was hanging from high up in the main waiting room....Slowly moving in some air movements...
Era: WWII.
Mike, thank you for last night's post. I forwarded it to my wife (we have separate computers and email addresses)and she was glad to be able to read it. Her first trip to NYC was in the late forties, arriving from Asheville and leaving for Memphis via Cincinnati, and living in New York from 1951 to 1962--arriving on the sleeper carried to Washington on the Tennesean, but finally leaving, headed to Boise, on the Century (change in Chicago to the City of Portland). She was in and out of Penn Station several times while she lived in New York, and she remembers the station well. Sad to say, I did not get to New York until 1969, and I wish could have seen the old station.
Johnny
I well recall being in Penn Station in 1962 on a first-grade class trip. The baggage room was very busy; I yelled to a forklift driver, asking what he was moving in a large, unusually shaped wooden box. He yelled back "That's a harp!" Imagine shipping a harp by passenger train today. We walked through a train that was going to leave soon for Florida. Maybe it was the "Silver Meteor" but it was a beautiful thing! I was only six years old but that has stuck in my mind ever since, how clean and shiny it was. Maybe the railroads and the station were in a decline, but it did not look it that day.
In one of Lorraine Diehl's books about the station there is a picture of the stone eagles behind a construction barrier. The name on the barrier is "Lipsett" who I assume is the company that demolished the building. They also cut up the legendary ocean liner the "Normandie" back in 1947. New York has lost so much.
aegrotatioAll of those pictures of track had been long covered by the new concourse level floor for decades by the time level C and above of NYP were demolished.
CSSHEGEWISCHIn those pre-air conditioning days, the high ceilings created a chimney effect (warm air rises) which caused a draft to bring cooler air into the waiting room.
Awesome, awesome words describing the creation of the Late, Great Penn Station, and how and why it was designed as it was, etc....
I could follow his words describing "paths" thru the Station from my memory of being in and thru it so many decades ago....
A great post.
I learned this from my brother, who is a licensed architect. One of the reasons for the high-ceiling waiting rooms was to keep them reasonably cool. In those pre-air conditioning days, the high ceilings created a chimney effect (warm air rises) which caused a draft to bring cooler air into the waiting room.
Thanks for the Granger excerpt. I've admired his work with Frost and even more so the solo work of the latter. Great artistic visions that inspire beyond mere utilitarian designs. It's somewhat analogous to a pretty cheap, simple, though large, low-ceiling meeting hall vs a cathedral. Both might hold several thousand people, but what a difference.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Cool thing about the old Penn Station is that the waiting room was easy to bypass but impossible to forget. Commuters who seldom went upstairs always knew that a magnificent room with a 150-foot ceiling was up there, and that simple awareness provided the antidote to claustrophobia. Here's an excerpt from a 1913 book, Charles Follen McKim: A Study of His Life and Work by Alfred Hoyt Granger ( of Frost & Granger, the architects who designed LaSalle Street Station and Northwestern Station in Chicago, Omaha Union Station and the Milwaukee Road Station in Minneapolis.)
It was undoubtedly the intimacy fostered by close association in connection with the improvements in Washington between Mr. McKim and Mr. Cassatt which led the latter to entrust to McKim, Mead and White, without any question of competition, the building of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Manhattan. In 1871 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company secured by leases the control of the United Railroads of New Jersey which terminate in Jersey City. From that time the desire of the railroad was to get into or onto Manhattan Island, and many plans were considered, only to be set aside as impractical. The panics of 1873 and 1884 made it impossible to finance any great undertaking from which there could be no immediate return. The beginnings of the Hudson Terminal scheme first suggested tunnels under the North River, but the engineering obstacles to such a plan were deemed unsurmountable. In 1884, the papers were filled with the reports of a suspension bridge over the North River, having a span almost twice as great as the Brooklyn Bridge. This, too, was given up largely because of the active opposition of the river traffic.
In 1899, Alexander J. Cassatt became President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. That he was a man of large vision we have already seen, in his having voluntarily given up the Mall property in Washington. To such a man physical obstacles are as nothing in comparison with an ideal to be realized. Many of his most devoted supporters after the work on the terminal improvements was begun offered him nothing but discouragement at the inception of the scheme. In 1892, the subject of tunneling under the river was again revived, careful surveys were made, and a number of different plans submitted, but the silver panic of 1893 again made the financing of such a project impossible. The purchasing of the control of the Long Island Railroad by the Pennsylvania in 1900 made a physical connection between the two railroads a necessity. During all these years the population of New York and the surrounding cities had grown by leaps and bounds, increasing by thirty-eight per cent in the area of Greater New York between 1890 and 1905. If the Pennsylvania Company were to secure and retain their legitimate share of the traffic of handling such a population, immediate action, in the judgment of Mr. Cassatt, was necessary. No makeshift schemes appealed to him; only a great station in the heart of Manhattan Island could satisfy his dreams for the future growth and supremacy of the Pennsylvania Railroad. To accomplish this before the cost should become prohibitive or the accomplishment of the work impossible, because of the construction of other underground lines, demanded instant work. The plan as conceived in the mind of Mr. Cassatt seemed to his associates at first hearing like a dream from the "Arabian Nights," but only those who dream dreams and see visions accomplish the impossible and the enthusiasm of the leader soon fired his associates.
The plan as outlined, and as it was afterwards carried out, involved not only the acquiring of sufficient land in the heart of the city for a station to meet the wants of the people for years to come, but it was also considered necessary to offer to Newark and the other cities in New Jersey and to the residential sections of Long Island quick transportation to New York and intercommunication and to provide all-rail connections between the South and West on one side and New England and the East on the other. One can easily imagine the eager sympathy with which McKim entered into these schemes. The designing of the portal to the Capital City had been entrusted to Burnham as head of the Park Commission, but here was a greater portal to a far greater city than any other in the Western World. The bringing of the trains into New York and other structural problems had been worked out by the engineers, but the designing of a station to meet the new conditions was surely a problem of sufficient magnitude to fire the ambition of any man.
Many studies were made of most different types, but always the architects saw before them the great baths of Rome, magnificent in their dignity and simplicity, the greatest examples in history of large areas roofed over and treated in a monumental manner. Two ideas were predominant from the very beginning: the building must at once express a great railway station under the unusual conditions of having the tracks so far below ground that no outward expression of their existence was possible, and it must also stand as the great monumental gateway to the metropolis. In addition to these main ideas the station was so planned as to give the greatest number of lines of circulation in order to avoid congestion of traffic. How this was accomplished can best be understood by a glance at the plan.
The central feature is the great waiting-room which can be approached from the center of the Seventh Avenue facade through the arcade of shops which carries Thirty-second Street direct to the waiting-room, also from Thirty-first and Thirty-third Streets and from the carriage court at either end. In this main waiting-room are ticket offices, telephones and telegraph, news-stand and other conveniences for the traveler, so located as to save any unnecessary steps. Between the main waiting-room and the train concourse are two large subsidiary waiting-rooms, one for men and one for women. These rooms, as well as the main waiting-room, open directly into the great train concourse from which very easy flights of steps lead down to the trains. This concourse can also be reached by easy stairs from Eighth Avenue and from Thirty-first Street and Thirty-third Street, without going through the main station. At the west end of the Thirty-second Street arcade is a colonnaded loggia from which one enters the restaurant on the one side and the lunch-room on the other. Sloping driveways, over sixty feet in width along Thirty-first Street and Thirty-third Street, carry vehicles down to the waiting room level direct from Seventh Avenue.
Such in brief are the main features of the plan, which is surely one of greatest simplicity and convenience. In no other large station are the incoming and outgoing passengers kept more separate so that even in the rush hours the station never seems crowded. Another convenience for the public is the mezzanine concourse halfway between the train level and the main concourse floor, from which concourse one can go direct from his train to Seventh or Eighth Avenue or to Thirty-first Street, Thirty-third or Thirty-fourth Street, or can change from the Pennsylvania to the Long Island trains without climbing up to the street level, as what is really a separate and complete station is provided for the Long Island Road at the northwestern corner of the building at the lower level.
So much for the practical features which do so much for comfort and convenience of the traveler. Upon the solution of these questions depends much of the success of any building, but these questions, though they be ever so perfectly solved, do not satisfy the natural demands to be made of such a building as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company proposed to build in New York. To do this, those qualities which make for real architecture, dignity, proportion, and beauty were, in the mind of Mr. Cassatt, quite as necessary as the ones already spoken of, and these qualities McKim was called upon to produce. That he did so in this as in so many other cases no one can deny, but what makes the architectural solution of the Pennsylvania Station supremely interesting is the fact that it was the last work in which he took any active part, and to one who has studied the growth of his style it seems to be the fulfillment of everything for which he had striven so hard, the visible embodiment of those principles to which he had given his life.
When the actual working drawings for the Pennsylvania Station were commenced, McKim's health had begun to fail so rapidly that he was not able to give any attention to the study of the details. The original conception was inspired by him and in its development he took the deepest interest, but his assistants, and among them notably Mr. Richardson, worked out the details and developed the conception into the beautiful structure which is such a monument to New York. Looking down Thirty-second Street from Broadway the picture which fills the eye, of a great Doric portal, behind which rises one of the lofty semicircular windows of the waiting-room, is at once expressive of the whole idea, the gateway to a great city: not a gateway in a solid wall of fortifications as in the ancient city, but the modern gateway through which thousands are daily brought to and taken home from the city by means of electricity and steam; in other words, a railway station, the only possible portal under the conditions of modern life. Standing at the corner of Broadway and Thirty-second Street at any hour of a clear afternoon, the color effect of the station against the blue of the sky is one of such beauty that it almost hurts, it is so simple, so pure, so serene.
Go inside the Seventh Avenue portal, through the arcade lined with shops, and stop at the head of the stairway leading down into the waiting-room; at every step it grows more wonderful, so that instinctively one lowers one's voice as one takes in slowly the intense beauty of this gigantic room. Is this a railroad station, a place of dust and noise and hurry? Where are the things one always associates with such a place? Look around; it is not necessary to ask a single question, everything the traveler can demand is before him, and all distinctly marked and so located as to serve him with greatest convenience and expedition. It is hardly comprehensible that this can be the waiting-room of a railway station; this great hall of simple and lofty proportions, flooded with the light of day, warm in color from the mellow tones of the Travertine stone, here used for the first time in America; almost entirely devoid of decoration except for those marvelous maps which Jules Guerin has painted on the walls. Yes, these are maps, questioning traveler, real railroad maps, and absolutely correct in the drawing, these exquisite harmonies of blue and buff.
Go on into the concourse from which one enters one's train; still no noise, no dirt, no confusion. You are in an even larger room than the main waiting-room, a room as light as out of doors, for it is really a court covered with glass. The steel structure supporting this glass roof is again devoid of ornamentation or embellishment of any sort, but wonderfully impressive from the supreme beauty of line and function like the lean, lithe frame of a young athlete stripped of every ounce of superfluous flesh. From this concourse one descends by very easy steps to a platform on the level of the floor of the cars, which are entered without the usual steep platform steps. It is all so simple, so serene, so beautiful, that even when once seated in the train it is hard to realize that one has been through that which, at the time of its completion, was the largest railway station in the world. Did McKim, whose health had for some years been failing, and who felt that he was near the end of his period of active service, see before him more clearly the vision of the great orderly, simple civilization of which he had always dreamed, and for the realization of which he had so devotedly and unselfishly worked? I think it must have been so. This was a type of what the civilization of to-morrow already demands, calmness, order, beauty. All these are to be found embodied and glorified in the Pennsylvania Station, a mighty portal, a perpetual gateway to a great modern city. "Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors." These inspired words come to one's mind when gazing upon this poem in stone, the offspring of modern science and modern art.
All of those pictures of track had been long covered by the new concourse level floor for decades by the time level C and above of NYP were demolished. The extension of the floor is the true travesty which completely obliterated the whole "grand entrance to New York City" idea. Arrivals just exit to the street, with a low ceiling the whole time and seeing relatively nothing of note, when the tracks were covered by the extended concourse floor.
As I said earlier, people who arrived at NY Penn Station would exit via the stairwells to the street. They weren't greeted by anything grand, and after the concourse was extended over the track level, they didn't see daylight until they exit the building.
This is detailed in much depth by the many books on NY Penn Station, including "The Destruction of Penn Station" by Barbara Moore, Peter Moore, Lorraine B. Diehl, and Eric P. Nash as well as the book "Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels" by Jill Jonnes.
Not apologetic by any means, they do analyze the odd design decisions of NY Penn Station which exhibitted several impractical features of the building for travellers. The building was built as a showcase but not as a practical, functional building. It was a cathedral to excess yet didn't really serve the traveller that well, especially the arriving traveller and the commutter, who were always scurrying about in the low-ceiling basement until exitting to the street. These books especially contrast how NY Penn Station was so impractical when compared to the later-built Grand Central Terminal.
Users of Penn Station were always scurrying around like rats. The only difference is that before it was demolished, the *departing* passengers enjoyed the grandious structure while the arriving traveller and the LIRR commuter had experienced a low-ceiling basement the whole time. They would most likely not notice any difference in today's Penn Station but for the new technology, escalators, and air conditioning.
President Eisenhower leaving Penn Station in a Lincoln convertible http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/17c45fb0fce30c74_large http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/c22f3466c36bc7d8_large
President Eisenhower leaving Penn Station in a Lincoln convertible
http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/17c45fb0fce30c74_large
http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/c22f3466c36bc7d8_large
.....Nice picture. Looks like someone had even cleaned the Benrus clock.
Penn Station in 1962. Although not exactly "dingy, filthy and just plain ugly" and worthy of being demolished, maybe some cleaning and restoration would have brought back the glory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC5.jpg
tomikawaTT As a high school student in the early 1950s I had occasion to wander all over New York, including Penn Station. The posted photos make the main concourse look like the Taj Mahal. In person, it was dingy, filthy and just plain ugly. I, for one, felt no sense of loss when the air space was used for the New Madison Square Garden (which was never a garden and is now nowhere near Madison Square...) Chuck
As a high school student in the early 1950s I had occasion to wander all over New York, including Penn Station.
The posted photos make the main concourse look like the Taj Mahal. In person, it was dingy, filthy and just plain ugly. I, for one, felt no sense of loss when the air space was used for the New Madison Square Garden (which was never a garden and is now nowhere near Madison Square...)
Chuck
Many of the old time terminals that were "dingy, filthy and just plain ugly" and you call it have since been beautifully restored. Some still function as railroad terminals.
Kansas City, Newark Penn, Washington DC, Kansas City, St Louis, Los Angeles, Scranton PA and Jersey City Terminals come to mind.
tomikawaTT As a high school student in the early 1950s I had occasion to wander all over New York, including Penn Station. The posted photos make the main concourse look like the Taj Mahal. In person, it was dingy, filthy and just plain ugly. I, for one, felt no sense of loss when the air space was used for the New Madison Square Garden (which was never a garden and is now nowhere near Madison Square...) The problem is you had the opportunity to explore, examine, etc....too late....It was past it's glory. The RR probably had already decided it would downplay it...made some ugly changes.....blocked off some areas....and get dirty....and just let it deteriorate to what you saw. It's finest hour was during WWII.....Really served a purpose. And yes, it did look like a cathedral....awesome while doing that service. Chuck
The problem is you had the opportunity to explore, examine, etc....too late....It was past it's glory. The RR probably had already decided it would downplay it...made some ugly changes.....blocked off some areas....and get dirty....and just let it deteriorate to what you saw.
It's finest hour was during WWII.....Really served a purpose. And yes, it did look like a cathedral....awesome while doing that service.
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