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.
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?
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.
Quentin
"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:
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.
Grand Central Terminal in December 1941
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?
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?
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.
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
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
.
K4sPRR:
Sure enough....Page 134, and bingo...There it was. I had completely forgot about that pic. in my book.
Probably will be demolished to build 15 Penn Plaza.
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