The Four-Story tall facade of New York Pennsylvania Station, on Seventh Avenue
Pennsylvania Station, viewed from the corner of Thirty First Street and Seventh Avenue.
As we begin our tour, we arrive at the Arcade. From the main entrance, we enter a hallway, having shops at both sides with tall storefronts. We walk west, towards the Main Waiting Room.
The Main Waiting Room of Penn Station. Inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, the breathtakingly spacious waiting room was covered in filth and grime by the mid-1960s, after years of neglect.
Exiting Main Wating Room for a brief moment, we enter the Thirty-First Street Driveway. A pedestrian bridge is visible above, which led commuters from the waiting room out to the sidewalk. This driveway was used by cars and taxis to drop off people commut
Another view of the driveway.
Upon re-entering the station, we enter the Grand Concourse. With its high glass ceiling, one disembarking traveler entering New York could gaze at the rise of the morning sun simply by looking up. By 1965, this section of the station had been completely d
The entrance that led to the stations grand waiting room. As of 2017, this is a low-ceilinged, jam-packed waiting area that sits under Madison Square Garden.
Above the tracks in the Grand Concourse. Light streams in from the dome above.
A shot of the 33rd Street Exit. The entrance to the Driveway can be seen at the right.
Exiting Penn Station from Thirty-Third Street, we walk to Eighth Avenue and cross the street. We are now viewing Penn Stations Eighth Avenue facade. The Farley Post Office Building would be to the right.
We head south two blocks to Thirty-First Street, where we now are now viewing Pennsylvania Stations southwestern corner.
One final view of the palace-esque, Beaux-Arts edifice from the skies.
Updated on Jun 16th, 2017, 12/31/69 7:33:37 pm | 5 logs
Published on Sep 13th, 2016, 9/13/16 4:25 pm
v3.0 - 06/16/17 Changes: * Raised Facade by 2 meters * Removed Escalator in the Main Waiting Room * Added circa 1950's newsstand in the Grand Concourse * Added benches in the Grand Concourse * Edited shape of semicircular windows * Fixed width of Driveway entrances in the Main Waiting Room * Fixed lighting in Men's and Women's Waiting Rooms * Added IND subway entrance at SE 8th Avenue & 33rd Street corner of Penn Station * Redid sidewalk widths for greater accuracy
Included in the file is a texture pack which you need to use! Otherwise, everything's going to look really off. (Made by NJDaeger).
NOTE: If you do not spawn next to the station, it can be found at coordinates: (-467, 36, 580). I highly recommend you use a command block if you are playing on singleplayer.
Do not reupload, modify, or redistribute any part of this map and project. You cannot claim this to be your own work and I grant you no permission to use any of the map's elements in your own work.
Historical Background Info:
New York's original Penn Station was a Beaux-Arts building constructed by the architectural firm, McKim, Mead & White. Having opened in 1910, the station finally provided direct rail travel to & from New York City. Passengers no longer had to transfer to a ferry from Long Island City or Hoboken, which would bring them across the river into Manhattan.
The railroad station served the Pennsylvania Railroad and Long Island Railroad for several decades. It was most heavily used during World War II, a time when tens of millions of passengers used the station. Pitted against a booming auto industry and the beginning of the Jet Age however, railroad service was beginning to dwindle. In the 1950's, rail travel suffered a significant decline as more people traveled by car or plane. With the railroad industry doing poorly, the company (The Pennsylvania Railroad) that owned Penn Station was losing money, and in an attempt to save the PRR from bankruptcy, the above-ground portion of the station was sold and demolished to make way for what is now Madison Square Garden. Its demolition led to public outcry and protests from many architects, although nothing could be done to save the station.
A crowd protests outside the building, hoping that the historical building would be saved.
Many people criticizing the demolition made notable remarks, such as Vincent Scully, who once said:
An architecture critic working for the New York Times also wrote:
54 years later, these words are still moving.
The demolition of a station many considered to be one of the greatest works of public architecture ultimately led to the movement of architectural preservation in the United States. Two years after its demolition,having nearly suffered the same fate as its neighbor across town, Grand Central Terminal was designated a New York City landmark. Were it not for the loss of Pennsylvania Station, many more historical and culturally significant buildings would have been laid to waste by the wrecker's ball.
More Photos and Side-by-Side Comparisons
Bird's-eye view of Penn Station.
The grand, four-story tall facade of Pennsylvania Station on Seventh Avenue, flaunting its colonnade of granite Doric columns.
Seventh Avenue entrance, as seen from Thirty-Second Street.
Seventh Avenue Facade. View from corner of 31st Street & 7 Av.
Light streams in to the Main Waiting Room of Penn Station, a breathtakingly spacious space inspired off of the Roman Baths of Caracalla.
A shot of the entire concourse. Above is Penn Station's iconic glass dome. The 33rd street entrance is visible at the other end.
The massive, glass-domed Concourse of Pennsylvania Station, where light once streamed in during the day to illuminate the spacious waiting area. The base of Madison Square Garden now occupies this once magnificent view inside the razed building. (Left c. 1910 ; Right, c. 1963)
View from Track 4 in the Main Concourse. Platforms and tracks are visible.
Looking above the tracks.
Taxi Driveway. Arched bridge to the Waiting Room is seen nearby.
Skylight above the tracks, near the Driveway. (I hate to admit it, but I could not find the image on the right online, so I "borrowed" it from another video which also features a Penn replica in Minecraft, by someone named " P_Gitty ". Please check out his replica of Penn as well!)
Penn Station, corner of Eighth Ave & Thirty-First Street. View looking Southeast.
Pennsylvania Station's Eighth Avenue entrance, slightly smaller than its Seventh Avenue counterpart. The image on the right shows it being demolished around 1964.
TBA (It takes a while to render spaces with many light sources, though the platforms remain largely unchanged since their construction in 1910).
Penn Station's Demolition (1963 - 1966)
The Grand Concourse is demolished. Only a few of its steel arches are left standing. Soon, these too will be razed.
Demolition takes place inside the Main Waiting Room. Columns are taken apart.
Dust & debris collect at the floor of the Main Waiting Room, as it is demolished.
Aerial view of demolition.
By the mid-1960's only the Seventh Avenue facade of the original Penn Station is left. The structure of Madison Square Garden can be seen in the background.
The current Penn Station
Amtrak Concourse. Formerly the Main Waiting Room of the complex. The escalators and stairs still remain in the same place.
Departure Board inside the waiting area. Formerly the Grand Concourse. A very claustrophobic area, given its low ceilings and the large crowds here.
A dull view of one of Penn's low-ceiling passageways.
OK I am a bit late to find this particular project but I can't thank you enough for the meticulous detail you have provided. In doing so you have helped me to verify something I have long suspected and which I don't think too many other people have realized.
I am one of those people who wander around NY Penn looking for the old stuff from the former station. What you have helped me to confirm is that the very tall, central iron columns which were central to the glass canopy structure, in fact still exist at the underground track level. These are found if you go down the lower level, west end escalator to the 9/10 platform. At the bottom of the escalator are two very large diameter columns which have been covered in concrete and painted. I am 100% convinced that inside here are the two large iron columns holding up the central structure of the canopy. I've made this connection through old photographs but your model has allowed me to stand right in that very spot and see it for myself.
If you stand in your model at (-494, 10, 189) you will be right between these two columns. Go to NY Penn and stand in that same spot, and you will see them. They still exist. Even the people who give tours, I have never heard mention of knowledge of what these are.
Absolutely love what you've done here. Amazing and wonderful and so incredibly useful to walk through this. Thank you very much for this. I believe that I will actually be able to use this to find other hidden artifacts which still exist in the mystery that is the remains of NY Penn.
Someone can help me ? When i extract the file, a lot of folders appear. And when i cop all of them to ''saves'', the map don't appear in game. Am i doing something wrong ? Help me please!
Put all of the folders in one folder called 'Penn Station'. Then, put the Penn Station folder in your saves folder and it should work. Hops this helps!
One of my greatest regrets is that I was born too late to experience this masterpiece in person. Thank you so, so much for bringing it to life in Minecraft. The metalwork and clerestory windows have me drooling... some of the most beautiful architecture ever created.
Such a same what happens to these old buildings, I have seen too many of beautiful old buildings being replaced with parking lots and convenience stores...
this is so accurate i can hardly believe it so many people claim they are being accurate when the building doesn't even look alike its nice to see someone actually live up to the claim
Oh my, this is incredibly beautiful... I saw this station on a documentary about New York City's transit system a few months back, and always thought it looked better than Grand Central (though that is still a lovely place.) Glad to see it in the flesh here. It's a great monument to the station that once was. I bet even the architect himself would be thoroughly impressed. You've captured it very convincingly, from what I can see. I look forward to exploring it.
It clearly says Amtrak, which is not a subway. It's just underground lol. And it is a central station, there's just no head house/station building above ground that shows otherwise.
This is truly incredible. Not only have you recreated something lost to us, but you managed to capture the tragedy of it all. Thank you for this lesson in history, very well done.
Wow this is absolutly amazing. Honesty great job man. I love seeing builds by people I know. Absolutly amazing. If you wanna do some subways on GF, please do XD
This is without doubt the best building i have ever seen on Planet Minecraft. An impressive and accurate reconstruction of a beautiful and long gone building deserves more than a diamond.
This is really sad, but fascinating at the same time. Thank you so much for inspiring me to recreate our own capital city which was completely destroyed in ww2, leaving its amazing architecture destroyed and replaced by tall ugly boxes with doors and windows. :'(
Mech I'm honestly type-less (speechless), this is absolutely amazing. Just goes to show you how stupid people can be when wanting to tear down a architectural masterpiece and put in useless junk. Just absolutely an amazing job dude
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I am one of those people who wander around NY Penn looking for the old stuff from the former station. What you have helped me to confirm is that the very tall, central iron columns which were central to the glass canopy structure, in fact still exist at the underground track level. These are found if you go down the lower level, west end escalator to the 9/10 platform. At the bottom of the escalator are two very large diameter columns which have been covered in concrete and painted. I am 100% convinced that inside here are the two large iron columns holding up the central structure of the canopy. I've made this connection through old photographs but your model has allowed me to stand right in that very spot and see it for myself.
If you stand in your model at (-494, 10, 189) you will be right between these two columns. Go to NY Penn and stand in that same spot, and you will see them. They still exist. Even the people who give tours, I have never heard mention of knowledge of what these are.
Absolutely love what you've done here. Amazing and wonderful and so incredibly useful to walk through this. Thank you very much for this. I believe that I will actually be able to use this to find other hidden artifacts which still exist in the mystery that is the remains of NY Penn.
Bravo!
Thank you.
The metalwork and clerestory windows have me drooling... some of the most beautiful architecture ever created.
so many people claim they are being accurate when the building doesn't even look alike
its nice to see someone actually live up to the claim
I saw this station on a documentary about New York City's transit system a few months back, and always thought it looked better than Grand Central (though that is still a lovely place.)
Glad to see it in the flesh here. It's a great monument to the station that once was. I bet even the architect himself would be thoroughly impressed. You've captured it very convincingly, from what I can see. I look forward to exploring it.
*Slow claps*