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93 Comments
- burningmonk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+40Such a shame.
- scrubadub, on 10/12/2007, -4/+34I'd take a picture of today's NYC subways but I get threatened and told to put my camera away. At least I'm safer because of it.... (sarcasm)
- scrubadub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27Yeah I was just totally making crap up
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/nyregion/22subway.html?ex=1400644800&en=ab6e5e531d7bed6d&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
http://www.dos.state.ny.us/info/register/2004/nov24/pdfs/rules.pdf
1050.9.c. No photograph, film or video recording shall be made or taken on or in any conveyance or facility by any person, except members of the press holding valid press identification cards issued by the New York City Police Department or by others duly authorized in writing to engage in such activity by the authority. All photographic activity must be conducted in accordance with the provisions of this Part. - radicaldementia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Wow I wish Penn Station still looked like that. I go there when I travel to visit my parents, and the whole thing is underground now, beneath MSG. It's still huge, but its basically a big maze, and isn't nearly as impressive as those photos.
- dolby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20As a New York it is sad to see it go but it ushered in a time of protected landmarks so that something like this will never happen again.
- cloud3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I had an architecture professor who described the destruction of Penn Station saying: "you used to enter New York as a God, now you enter New York as a sewer rat."
- gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Cleveland, Ohio also had a local landmark that was equally impressive: The Terminal Tower. Unfortunately during the urban redevelopment of the late 80's and early 90's, the incredible architecture, huge multi-story columns and depression-era art was mainly covered up by a large shopping mall. While the mall's design stayed true in scale and theme to the original terminal tower design, it is now a giagantic mall filled with "brass vendors", perfume carts, and off-brand clothing stores.
These incredible pictures remind me of other important landmarks that have been lost in a short-sighted attempts at econmic development. Despite the push for urban architecture and heritage preservation, there remains a lot to be done to preserve some of our most stunning buildings - especially in smaller cities that have not waken to the importance of conservation. Here's a link to Cleveland's Terminal Tower photos. Unfortunately, not many remain of the original interior.
Before:
http://www.csuohio.edu/CUT/gallery.htm
After:
http://www.clevelandskyscrapers.com/cleveland/avenuetowercity.jpg - Eraserhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12The sixties where a diaster for marvellous old buildings all over the world.
Here in the UK we destroyed many as well.
Hopefully the new economies like China will learn from our mistakes - MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I can't believe that humans used to build such large and ornate structures. If you look back in time at Europe's gothic cathedrals, these pictures of Penn Station, the craftsmanship is astounding, and think about technology and tools they had!
It's a shame that they really "don't build them like they used to." Everything now is built to be cost-effective. We've achieved some great things in the modern era, and while the WTC was big, it was nowhere near as beautiful as the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building built 40 years earlier. - NoOneButMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Yeah - Penn doesnt look nearly as nice now as it does in those pictures. To dirty now-a-days. And the architecture isnt really existant as it's just a series of tunnels connecting to other tunnels. Though, one of the entrances to MSG looks somewhat nice, It'd be better to have the original Penn back.
- beachchalet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9another architectural gem raped by the greed of developers. These crimes persist everyday in places like Phoenix, or LA or anyplace developers get their clammy meat hooks into beautiful places and "maximize yield" in the name of progress. They are a pox on our society and should be regulated more heavily than Sarbanes Oxley.
If we let them continue, our entire country will look like what they did to Penn Station, or LA....freeways, traffic, souless interactions between people and their surroundings.
You go to any city in America and you will see the horror of the strip malls, the fast-food joints lurking at every intersection, vast parking lots. This kills a community.
Their response, lazy and self-serving is to say, "you can't legislate good taste". Thay may be true in a vacuum, but places like Portland have shown that given a choice, people make better decisions than developers in terms of what they want their community to look like. For example, they rejected the typical style we see cluttering our world....the garage on the side, the peaker roof, the spilt-level abomination.
If only the "guardians" of our world, those government departments in charge of doling out permits, were not so swayed by the potential revenue from a new development, and cared as much about what the community would look like, and what the community as a whole wants (as opposed to being in bed with the developers, or worse yet, guessing at tastes) we would quickly put a stop to this madness.
Everytime a hideous building goes up, not only have resources been wasted in its construction, (and in the case of Penn Station, the gems that are stolen from us), we leave behind with a carbuncle that future generations are insulted with, and have to apply resources to remove or alter, or just die a little by having it in our midst.
Let's rise up and change the way these decisions are made before we are left with a completely faux world or McMansions, endless highways filled with Red Lobsters and Olive Gardens, leading to anonymous subdivisions of ranch-style blandness. - doant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9we have some great old stations in the Netherlands but this one is really beautiful. reminds me of a station in Berlin. the people in the 60s did some strange things to old buildings. In Groning ''a city in the Netherlands'' there was a beautiful sealing was hidden in the 60s by a lower sealing to make it more functional and modern. nobody knew that it was there until they removed the sealing in 2000 .. they restored the old sealing and now it looks great. to bad that other buildings did not survive those ... modern times
take a look at the station on this link
http://stationsweb.brinkster.net/station.asp?station=groningen - thejadedmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8They were both built by the same railroad company, and probably used the same architects (or at least themes).
I love going to 30th street, it's such an amazing building, and some areas have such amazing detail. I wish Penn Station was still around to look at like 30th street is. - DannoHung, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Holy *****, we traded that for the Knicks and the Rangers?
Can we trade back?
I'm not necessarily opposed to replacing historic architecture with new architecture, but if it DOES occur, it should be required that it at least try to achieve a grander vision.
If they had maybe had Frank Lloyd Wright do the new design (before his passing), it might've been a fair trade.
I blame Robert Moses. - kfconme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8wow, very nice find. I never knew it was that massive. a shame indeed.
- Lardquake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The 60s did more damage to the UK's architecture than the Luftwaffe.
- toekneebullard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7You're right Pepe. They should replace the Coliseum with a sports stadium. maybe get rid of the Great Pyramids to put up a mall. Perhaps all our national monuments should be razed to make sway for shoe stores.
No one needs history. It just means bad plumbing for those of us living in the future. - orbweaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Makes me sad. Leave it to the greedy captains of the billion-dollar sports market to rape the city and call it progress. They just did it to us this year. After years of public resistance, they finally passed a little law that made the raising of a tax for a sports stadium "exempt" from public referendum. Not sure what masterpiece they will tear down, but I'm sure they'll destroy whatever they have to in order to make a buck.
- FearNLoathing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This looks similar in architecture to Philadelphia's 30th Street Station.
- avalenci, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Some cities have learned to preserve its architecture (Tokyo station for example , the original was one floor , now it has levels for trains but a good part of the original building is still there) ... a shame you lost such a beautiful station.
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5What a beautiful building. I would have loved to seen those vaulted glass ceilings - it must have been breathtaking, even if you went through it every day. I'm going to think about this every time I go into that ugly concrete wart that is Penn Station today.
Even the Greyhound building was styling. We need more architects like that today. I'm sorry but people like Calatrava and Gehry are just not making the future I want to see. - docsnavely, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6beautiful photos! thanks for sharing the find!
why can't we have architecture like that in the 21st century? - GoodBrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4China is not learning from our mistakes, at least not very well. Neighborhoods that were centuries old are being torn up for shiny/ugly high rises.
- jmchez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The old Penn Station was destroyed by people who, essentially, exhibited the thinking of a modern day Vandal (as in the barbarian tribe). They were incapable of mustering the will, imagination, craftsmanship and resources to build something like that themselves. So, instead, they dismissed it as old fashioned and anachronistic.
The destruction of Penn Station still stands as, perhaps the wort act of civic vandalism ever perpetrated on an American city. It was replaced by a "disposable giant drum of glass and steel. In fact, not twenty years after it was built, the owners of the Madison Square Garden wanted to tear it down and move it. As if to demonstrate that they have no shame or historical perspective, they still want to move it and the site they want is the Farley Post office building, would be home of the new (but never as grand as the original), Penn Station.
It's cold comfort to note that the station's sacrifice helped other historical structures to be protected. Grand central station was about to undergo the same fate as was Union station in Washington, DC. For a glimpsed of what Penn Station would have looked like, modernized and cleaned, look at how modern retail and dining establishments saved Union Station. - claine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@gwinerreniwg
Although its true Tower City isn't the great mall it once was, your picture evidence is misleading. The images shown in the first link show the building from the North facing South, which has remained untouched. The mall portion was built onto the other side of the tower. The complex still serves as the central station for the various RTA train lines and provides connections to multiple hotels, office buildings, and sports arenas in the area. Far worse could've happened however, the same developer that pitched and built the mall is now involved in a large project to fix and maintain the tower (hence all the scaffolding you'd see on it if you went to Cleveland tomorrow). The previous owner of the tower let it fall into disrepair, which is now being rectified. - DS513, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, as sad as it is, there's no real reason to build buildings like this anymore. This building was built in an age before personal transportation was practical (remember, the Model T Ford had only started production in 1908, and mass transport by airplane was only a pipe dream), so this building was built to be functional and used regularly. Back in 1910, there was no reason to believe that this station wouldn't be used well into the next century, so it was built to last.
The digital revolution has really stifled the need to build large, ornate office buildings. Until fairly recently, it was neccicary for a corporation to have it's headquarters in a single building so divisions could communicate with each other. With the internet, it has become possible for a company to have divisions in many locations working together efficiently and seamlessly, lessening the need for a gigantic central headquarters.
It's a sad fact, but it seems that buildings like this have gone the same way as the zeppelin or vinyl records. - dvgraphics, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3While the demolition of Penn Station was a huge loss, the outrage it caused did pave the way for new legislation to help save countless subsequent buildings- Including Grand Central Terminal, which by the late sixties, early seventies was beginning a steep decline, and ready for developers to destroy.
I don't know if I would consider it a good thing, but it's very possible that dozens of other historic landmarks could have fallen if Penn Station didn't take one of the team- and open people's eyes. - pentomino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Huge? Not in the places that count. I visited once, and took a train in from New Jersey. It was like the stairwell at a hotel, but with thousands of people rushing to work around me.
- TWhid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Tearing that down was a crime. There's a plan to open a new Penn Station in the post office building across 8th Ave. from the current Penn Station/MSG.
Hope they don't screw it up :-) - arturobandini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Penn Station is in the process of being redesigned, and will be hopefully be constructed within our lifetime - here are some of the preliminary drawings:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan Station (Penn Station) designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill.
http://words.grubbykid.com/2006/04/27/updated_penn_station_design.html
http://www.som.com/opener.cfm (Click to Transportation > Penn Station Redevelopment) - oMeSSiaHo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As much as i dislike my fellow towns people we sorta have our heads in the right place with when it comes to this. My town is older then America and is where the Articles of Conederation were signed. Every day as I drive through the city I see the usual slums and bars but I also see where Ben Franklin used to grab a beer. Despite all of our usual failings we still have a respect for our history.
Conversly accross the border the town of Gettysburg wants to take some of the land from Picket's charge and turn it into a mini mall. That was one of the bloodiest days to take place on our soil and it turned the tide against the Confederate army and they want to build a ***** mini mall on the land. - eastblu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wow... it was an amazing station. To be honest, it looks like crap now.
- BicBall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3there are plans to make an addition to the station
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/nyregion/18penn.html - DS513, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Oh, and keep in mind, this was all done BEFORE AutoCAD. People made ACTUAL blueprints to build these kind of buildings. This was all done with human imagination and power. That makes it all the more incredible.
- beachchalet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3for Phoenix, I am refering to the best architecture there is: Mother Nature. It constantly amazes and depresses me that developers will take a plot of land...raze every living speck of tree on the site, do their bidding with the new tabula rasa (maximizing revenue, causing all sorts of water runoff issues), and then plant some pathetic saplings that will take 20 years to amount to anything...all the while following the letter of the law but having no spirit for it at all. They then retreat to their estates in Rye or Palm Beach..manicured and established, while the world reels in their cesspool of a development. Where is the government in this? Licking their chops at the new tax base handed to them? Are they all idiots?
- DS513, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No. That's not what I'm said at all. What I said is that this building's dimensions were all calculated manually, without any mental crutches like AutoCAD provides. The architects couldn't see a virtual model of the building before it was done, so everything had to be envisioned, calculated and constructed flawlessly. Even screwing something up to a quarter of an inch would mean that the building wouldn't be safe or functional. You can't deny that it would take more skill to make a building of this magnitude without digital help.
- lunarworks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Toronto's suffering from this sort of arrogance these days.
They're tearing down all kinds of stuff to put up big, ugly, generic condos in the downtown. Also, there's a famous piece of modernist architecture from the '50s along the DVP, the Bata headquarters, that the new property owner is going to tear down to build a religious centre. - theoallardyce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Why are buildings like this demolished so that cheap, ***** 'new-age' ***** ***** can be built. Modern architects suck ***** im sorry but 'organic', 'flowing-lines', 'free form' architecture is as ***** retarded as 60's concrete, nothing in the last 50 odd years has come close to good classic architecture of the various ages. How can some prat straight out of college think that his self-loving piece of ***** architecture is going to be better than the classics? Ok so im being a bit harsh, there have been some decent buildings in recent times i'll admit, and sure we should try new designs and there's even a place for the organic look sometimes, but still, most of it is complete wank.
- dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2 I saw something on TV the other day about when the city of Amsterdam was building a new subway and all along the path the mowed down very old, beautiful buildings until people rioted.
- kevincannon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2MikeCerm - I don't think it's just an issue of cost. It's due to a change of attitudes towards design.
As design proceed thorugh the early 20th Century minimalism became a strong influential force which sought to reject decoration as frivolous. The leaders of that movement were great designers and could pull off creating minimal designs that still retained a beauty, however it allowed less skilled designers and architects to follow them who could get hide their lack of skill behind minimalism.
Only now are we seeing a slow gradual return of decoration in design. - astatine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The interior looks familiar; is it the station in North By Northwest?
- TWhid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2the old Penn Station is not the Post Office. The old Penn Station was destroyed.
from the wikipedia link:
"The above-ground portion of the original structure was demolished in the mid 1960s to make room for the current Pennsylvania Plaza/Madison Square Garden complex." - rockefeller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@bpapa
I like how you let it bother you. - fascfoo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4The ban was indeed revoked after a big uproar.
- Hardcase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2We suffered in the early '70's in our neck of the woods. It's a shame - we lost some very significant pieces of local architecture and history that dated back to the founding of our city (well before Idaho was a state, although that's not so tough). And, worst of all, here it is over 30 years later and some of the sites are still empty pieces of land - or still "temporary" parking lots. Urban renewal nearly killed our downtown. Thankfully the "redevelopment" agency didn't get to tear down everything that they wanted, so the area has made a stellar recovery. One of the most popular forms of architecture? Buildings in the style of those that were torn down. Crazy.
- MadEejit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No, the Farley Post Office next to Penn Station was designed by the same architects as the original Penn Station, McKim, Mead, and White, and it has a similiar style:
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID133.htm
But Penn Station is currently in the same place it always was.
Yes, there's been a push for years to turn this into Moynihan Station, but as you mentioned Amtrak pulled out of the project. Ironically, the owner of Madison Square Garden, the impetus for demolishing the original Penn Station, wants to knock down the current MSG and move it to where the Farley Building is now, so there's a possiblity that two magnificent buildings will be destroyed for the same sports complex. - pentomino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm sure they'll get started on it right after they've finished rebuilding the World Trade Center site.
- swaxhog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Not practical? Huge ceilings, so what a 2nd floor with a Starbucks would be better? All that glass? Like there's no glass in the ***** they throw up these days?
This was a beautiful building that puts to shame modern architects designs. - crawfordbay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for those pictures.
- alexgreggs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's a shame that they don't put the effort into creating anything anymore, great craftmanship is gone.
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