It looks like the conversion of the Farley PO to the Moynihan Station is a go, barring internicene warfare between their decendants on the streets of NYC. Has anyone seen the plans for this project? Will changes in NYP trackwork be involved? Any new/modified platforms, or will it all just be Escalators and stairway work? Any chance of the new NJT tunnels connecting to NYP tracks? How 'bout on to NYG? I don't hold out any hope of that, but....
Hays
I am led to believe this project is just to get people from train to street and street to train rather than having anything really to do with trackage and platforms. The station as it is exists today is almost unwieldy and difficult at times to negotiate. Its not just the number of passengers but also the fact that the main building is Madison Square Garden and the railroad station part is nothing more than a plaza for a large subway station. Whoever, as a railroader, allowed the destruction of Pennsylvania Station as a station building, should be forced to stand with two large saucers of water in the middle of one of the hallways during any peak hour and keep doing it every day until he doesn't spill a drop of water! NYP as we know it today definitley is not a good railroad station which the likes of Miynihan Station should cure. The new NJT tunnels will have no connection to the tracks at present site but there should be public passage ways to connect. GCT is well out of reach of NYP if only because of the depth and number of exisiting subways and utilities; there just isn't all that room left underground in NY anymore with everything piled atop each other and side by side! The new NJT station is supposed to be several decks lower than NYP and many of the subways around there, too. The question is how deep is both practical and safe?
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East Side Access, which is being built with tunnel-boring machines, will take LIRR directly to GCT. This project takes issue with the idea that there isn't room for more tunnels in Manhattan.
Speaking of the original NY Penn Station, most of the bustle was one level down from the waiting room and is rather the same as it was in the "good old days" complete with the same low ceiling. The LIRR concourse actually has had its ceiling expanded using a nice arch with reflective panels to give an open and airy feeling.
Even when NYP was a "real" train station people still ran around like rats in its basement. The only thing gone is the fancy waiting room and taxiways which most users of the station never saw, anyway, which was kind of a design flaw noticed quickly after the station opened.
See here for more:
"The Destruction of Penn Station" by Barbara Moore, Peter Moore, Lorraine B. Diehl, and Eric P. Nash"Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels" by Jill Jonnes
The LIRR "East Side Access" will come in below the 'lower level' of GCT, given twenty, or so, more years to complete it. Thanks, Mayor Bloomberg, et. al.. It wouldn't be difficult to 'hang a right' and connect to NJT's dead-end tunnel. That would be cool!
I don't regret the demise of the original Penn Station. It, to put it simply, was ugly. No one ever called NYG ugly, not even Robert Moses or Fiorello LaGuardia.
But Hays, there was elegance and class in the building, a real public place and palace, the grandure of which is sorely missed in modern archetecture. Yest, GCT is beautiful as are several museums and the like. But Penn Station is sorely missing. And missed.
BNSFwatcherI don't regret the demise of the original Penn Station. It, to put it simply, was ugly.
Come on!! Most students of architecture regard the loss of the old Penn Station as an avoidable tragedy.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
While I cannot dispute the architectural importance of NY Penn Station the upper levels were unused by the vast majority of travellers. This factored significantly in the demolition decision. The floors above level B (the current "main floor") were simply non-functional and underutilized. The easy egress/ingress to level B made level 1 inconsequential. The reasons the modernized ticket windows and shops were added to level 1 (the demolished floor) were not illogical at all.
BNSFwatcherI don't regret the demise of the original Penn Station. It, to put it simply, was ugly. No one ever called NYG ugly, not even Robert Moses or Fiorello LaGuardia.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
BNSFwatcher I don't regret the demise of the original Penn Station. It, to put it simply, was ugly. No one ever called NYG ugly, not even Robert Moses or Fiorello LaGuardia.
....I believe the quote of "to put it simply, was ugly", is really the first time I ever heard such a comment about the Late Great Pennsy Station. in NYC.
Each is entitled to his / her opinion on any subject. I cannot give an opinion later in its last years of existence of just how it might have looked with post war changes and blocked off areas and so on....Probably dirty as well....But I can relate to what an impression it gave to me during the time bracket of WWII....
I remember it as an awsome edifice....Cathedral like. Beautiful in architictual design and it's space {at that time was certainly being used}....People everywhere. A most beautiful American Flag hung from one of the massive spaces celiings. Some site for the time period we were in.
I just think it is sad it was destructed so early.....back roughly, 1963 when preservation was not yet in vogue. If it could have survived, perhaps it too could have been restored {as was GCT}, In later years and refitted somewhat without destroying the architectual integrity of the structure and still be something of pride to NYC and people entering for the first time.
Washington D C Union Station is another example of a structure "brought back" as a brightened restored structure to be proud of.....
Quentin
Besides everything else that impressed me forever, I had never imagined a ceiling so high.
http://66.230.220.70/images/post/ny/35b.jpg
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0411/photos/119995pv.jpg
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0411/photos/119994pv.jpg
http://img321.imageshack.us/img321/2559/imagesxs7cd.jpg
Best picture of Penn Station on the internet is the 1910 photo at Shorpy.com
http://www.shorpy.com/node/299?size=_original
Did it ever "rain" inside the old NYP structure? That might be a good thing today, with the numerous "homeless" vagrants and bums hanging about. How did they get trespassing pigeons and "sparrows" out? Yar!, Washington Union Station is cool! I hope they can do something with Chicago Union -- it is a confusing mess today. I still aver that NYP was, and still is, ugly. Sorry 'bout that.
I remember birds flying around the waiting room. Made it all the better. Here's an ironic excerpt from an ancient article, Biggest Terminal In The World by P. Harvey Middleton
http://books.google.com/books?id=zqAEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q=&f=true
In order that the metropolis might have a railroad station equal to its needs, beautiful in architecture and perfect in its appointments, a crowded city in point of population and variety of business has been swept from off the face of Manhattan. Wholesale purchases of real estate involving an expenditure of ten million dollars were made in order to obtain the site. The swarming inhabitants of four entire blocks were driven from their homes, and five hundred buildings, worth four millions of dollars, including churches, tenement houses, apartment houses, brown stone residences, saloons, stores, factories and restaurants were razed to the ground. Then came an army of laborers with picks and shovels and wonderful machinery to dig and blast the biggest hole ever dug in New York, forty feet deep and twenty-eight acres in extent—an excavation costing another five millions of dollars.
And now that big hole has been filled with the greatest railroad building in the world, the largest of the more than one hundred thousand stations of civilization. To build it and the tunnels with which it is connected cost the price of an empire —more than the combined sums paid by the United States for the Philippines, Florida, Alaska and Louisiana. One hundred millions of dollars! And all this that the barriers of the East and North rivers, which for so many years have hampered the movement and development of traffic in Manhattan, might be removed, and direct entrance be afforded to New York City without recourse to ferries.
This improvement of the Pennsylvania system is easily the most important work ever undertaken by a railroad corporation, and the most impressive tribute ever offered to the metropolis as the focal point of America. The new terminal station is one-third larger than the present largest station in the world—Liverpool Street Station, London, and one half larger than the present largest station in the United States—South Station, Boston. Some idea of its mastodonic proportions may be gathered from the statement that you could put Madison Square Garden in one corner and the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in another corner and still there would be room in the great terminal for all the traffic it is designed to handle.
Incidentally, the first indoor hockey game was played in the original Garden built on the site of the 2nd depot of the New York & Harlem Railroad.
No one can argue the spectacle and grandure of the building, it was captivating and functional for the time. GCT reflected Victorian glory of NYC and its heritage while the PRR brought a 20th Century (and Philadelphian) influence not seen over on 42nd St and Park Ave. Both buildings offered the grandest entrance and exit to the City of New York that anyone could expect and respect from the "cultures" of the two competing roads. I loved them both and miss Penn. By the way I also miss the West Shore at Weehawken, the working ferry slips at Hoboken; and while never having gotten into the others, the prosporous looking activities of Pavonia Ave, Exchange Place, and at Liberty, are also sadly missed.
ModelcarBNSFwatcher I don't regret the demise of the original Penn Station. It, to put it simply, was ugly. No one ever called NYG ugly, not even Robert Moses or Fiorello LaGuardia. ....I believe the quote of "to put it simply, was ugly", is really the first time I ever heard such a comment about the Late Great Pennsy Station. in NYC. Each is entitled to his / her opinion on any subject. I cannot give an opinion later in its last years of existence of just how it might have looked with post war changes and blocked off areas and so on....Probably dirty as well....But I can relate to what an impression it gave to me during the time bracket of WWII.... I remember it as an awsome edifice....Cathedral like. Beautiful in architictual design and it's space {at that time was certainly being used}....People everywhere. A most beautiful American Flag hung from one of the massive spaces celiings. Some site for the time period we were in. I just think it is sad it was destructed so early.....back roughly, 1963 when preservation was not yet in vogue. If it could have survived, perhaps it too could have been restored {as was GCT}, In later years and refitted somewhat without destroying the architectual integrity of the structure and still be something of pride to NYC and people entering for the first time. Washington D C Union Station is another example of a structure "brought back" as a brightened restored structure to be proud of.....
I never saw Penn Station; but it looks similar to the now-destroyed concourse of Union Station in Chicago that I did have a couple occasions to experience. Photographs show the gothic-industrial beauty and grandeur of the space, the lacy steel arches (albeit hard to clean), and the light. I'll take this visceral expression of structure over the marble hiding the the real steel structure in neo-classical architecture. Truss and suspension bridges are more appealing to me than girder bridges. That's my aesthetic.
Wow, so two train stations were crumbled under a Madison Square Garden!! Fascinating coincidence.
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