Razing Penn Station......ugh.....a tragedy!
Peter
The august and spacious building was designed by the architectural firm McKim Mead & White. The terminal’s brash, white, eagle-crowned exterior with 84 granite Doric columns was based on the Acropolis, the Brandenburg Gate, St. Peter’s Basilica and the Bank of England. Its vast, lofty waiting hall was derived from the ancient Roman baths of Caracalla, Diocletian and Titus.
Charles McKim, the co-founder of the famous architectural firm, pronounced his Pennsylvania Station “a monumental gateway and entrance” to New York City. He enjoyed thinking of the “well-gowned women who would sweep up and down his broad staircases,” one of his friends said.
Or, as the art historian Hilary Ballon wrote in 2002: “Penn Station did not make you feel comfortable; it made you feel important.”
The loss of Penn Station stimulated public institutions devoted to historic preservation, along with stricter rules and more intense citizen activism in New York and elsewhere. Its demolition is the stuff of New York legend, an act of architectural vandalism so unspeakable that it gave rise to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, saved Grand Central Terminal and upended the city’s development priorities.