The Many Penn Stations Loved and Lost


Penn R.R. Sta­tion from Gim­bel Shop, New York, ca. 1910 – 1915

If you’ve ever taken AmTrak from one North­east­ern city to another, there’s a pretty good chance that your trip both began and ended at Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tion. The biggest and most famous Penn Sta­tion is here in New York, of course but Philadel­phia has one and Newark does too. When it was first built, Union Sta­tion (another com­mon sta­tion name) in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. was referred to as Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tion as well. Here’s the expla­na­tion: the stretch of track between D.C. and Boston now referred to as the North­east Cor­ri­dor was once the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road. The name“Penn Sta­tion” is really short­hand for Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road Sta­tion, which, of course, all these sta­tions were.


The President’s room, new Penn­syl­va­nia [i.e. Union] Sta­tion, Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Any­way, perus­ing the Library of Con­gress Prints and Pho­tographs Online Cat­a­log with the search term “penn­syl­va­nia sta­tion” yields inter­est­ing and var­ied results. There are only a cou­ple large, archival images avail­able on the web of the poised, intri­cate Penn Sta­tion as it was, before it was trag­i­cally lev­eled to make way for Madi­son Square Garden.


Main Con­course, Penn Sta­tion, New York City, ca. 1911.

Broad Street Sta­tion in Philadel­phia (later to be replaced by Philly’s Penn Sta­tion) was a sim­i­larly grand struc­ture to its New York sib­ling and would share the same fate. It was demol­ished in 1953 and is now the site of the archi­tec­turally for­get­table Penn Plaza just next door to City Hall.


Pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial for Broad Street Sta­tion, Philadel­phia, ca 1893

Dur­ing World War II, the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road and it’s var­i­ous sta­tions were vital for shift­ing troops and sup­plies. The var­i­ous Penn Sta­tions began to get out­fit­ted with some pretty fab­u­lously mid-​​century accom­mo­da­tions. Below, Broad Street Station’s Ser­vice Women’s Lounge.


Ser­vice Women’s Lounge, Broad Street Sta­tion, 1944


Ser­vice Women’s Lounge, Broad Street Sta­tion, 1944


Ser­vice Women’s Lounge, Broad Street Sta­tion, 1944


Ser­vice Women’s Lounge, Broad Street Sta­tion, 1944


Ser­vice Women’s Lounge, Broad Street Sta­tion, 1944

In much the same vein, the Penn Sta­tion that replaced Broad Street (now called 30th St. Sta­tion) in Philadel­phia had a gleam­ing new “cock­tail room,” com­plete with a cowhide bar, now also just a memory.


Cock­tail Room, Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tion, Philadel­phia, 1944

Penn Sta­tion in Har­ris­burg, PA had at one time a pretty remark­able USO “Can­teen and Lounge”.


Penn Sta­tion, Har­ris­burg, 1943


Penn Sta­tion, Har­ris­burg, 1943


Penn Sta­tion, Har­ris­burg, 1943

It’s pretty easy to rail against devel­op­ers who come along with some grand plan to squeeze greater prof­its out of a given piece of land. These are the guys that traded in old Penn Sta­tion for the blight of the Gar­den and the sprawl­ing and con­fused labyrinth of com­muter cor­ri­dors under­neath. How­ever, since pri­vate real estate devel­op­ers are a huge part of what makes New York what is, we don’t need to ban cap­i­tal­ists. We just need pub­lic mech­a­nisms to hault the projects that shouldn’t hap­pen in the first place.

Everybody’s more or less in agree­ment at that raz­ing the orig­i­nal New York Penn Sta­tion was a bad idea. So much so, in fact, that the State of New York and oth­ers have been doing what they can to res­ur­rect it right across the street in the form of Moyni­han Sta­tion. Still, the wrong can’t really be corrected.

Posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 1:27 am

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