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As of May 2023, this project is no longer being worked on.
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 Doric columns.
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.
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.
Then & Now
We lost that for this? Hmph.
External Links
Some sites I used
You're welcome to do a video showcase on YouTube, but please provide a link to the original page in the description.
Please do not reupload, modify, or redistribute any part of this map and project, or use it for your own work.
Old N.Y. Pennsylvania Station, (c. 1910 - 1963), Midtown Manhattan, New York City | ~Full Interior~ by Mech265 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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 Doric columns.
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.
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.
Then & Now
We lost that for this? Hmph.
External Links
Some sites I used
- Penn Station on www.nyc-architecture.com
- Archdaily.com, which has Penn's original plans available for viewing.
- Penn Station on Wikipedia
- "The Rise and Fall of Penn Station" A 50-minute documentary on Penn Station's history. (No longer working as of 3/2019)
- Two minutes of color footage from the station in 1959
You're welcome to do a video showcase on YouTube, but please provide a link to the original page in the description.
Please do not reupload, modify, or redistribute any part of this map and project, or use it for your own work.
Old N.Y. Pennsylvania Station, (c. 1910 - 1963), Midtown Manhattan, New York City | ~Full Interior~ by Mech265 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
| Credit | Original Architectural drawings by McKim Mead & White, Vatredox & NJDaeger for curves, Aa60660, CraftyFoxe [video] |
| Progress | 95% complete |
| Tags |
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Update #5 : by Mech265 06/16/2017 3:44:26 pmJun 16th, 2017
v3 Released. See description for a list of changes.
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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.