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.
March 12th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
January 15th, 2010 at 11:07 am
“To have loved and lost a Penn Station, is better than never having had one at all.” I don’t know who said that, but it was probably a wise dude.
The shot of the atrium in the main concourse is amazing. In regards to some of those shots of the Service Women’s Lounge, the architecture in those shots might be retro-sheik in another couple years.
January 16th, 2010 at 1:29 am
dude, just tell me where to get one of those wooden relief maps of the world and it’s a done deal, up on my wall.
thanks for stopping by!
January 16th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Why was everything, like, 100 times more awesome looking 70 years ago?