The waiting room of a rebuilt Pennsylvania Station. (Nova Concepts/courtesy of Atelier & Co.)
Rebuilding Pennsylvania Station, built in 1910 and demolished in 1963, is the single act that can best help bring beauty in architecture back to the United States and the rest of the world.
It would directly boost the beauty of the city itself, and as an arrival point for millions of visitors weekly, its accomplishment would inspire cities around the nation and the world to build their own versions of civic beauty. Think of the City Beautiful Movement that was inspired by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, whose Beaux-Arts design inspired developments over a span of decades that remain the most beautiful parts of many cities in the U.S. and globally.
It is understood that this will be a gigantic undertaking. N.Y. Governor Kathy Hochul has declared that her plan to surround the station with tall office towers, while demolishing the neighborhoods needed to build those buildings, is off the table. Some observers doubt the honesty of her cancellation of the plan (known as the GPP), but the fact of her announcement can take on a life of its own, combined with the post-covid wreckage of the market for office space done by private “work at home” policies.
Now it is time to make sure that New York City authorities give the boot to Madison Square Garden, which pays no taxes, squats atop the station and inhibits any real plan to renovate it, let alone rebuild it as originally designed by McKim, Mead & White. The deal that extended MSG’s lease expired in June, and a new lease of just three years – time enough for MSG to vamoose – is to be voted upon soon.
John Massengale, the chairman of CNU/NYC, the local chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and a friend of many years through my role on the board of the Institute of Classical Architecture, has summed up comprehensively and elegantly the status of the project to Rebuild Penn Station, as it has been called. This plan was conceived and carried forward by architect Richard Cameron of Atelier & Co., in NYC, now with the assistance of ReThinkNYC.com and its chairman, Sam Turvey.
The plan to rebuild Penn Station in its original design, with modifications to account for different engineering and commercial conditions that prevail today, is joined by another classical plan to renovate the station in a way that would be quite satisfying to most of a classical bent. It has been proposed by Alexandros Washburn for the Grand Penn Community Alliance. His plan would not rebuild the old station, but would create a train hall reminiscent of the wrought-iron begirdered hall of the original Penn, and add a classical colonnade encompassing the rest of the Penn footprint, enclosing an outdoor park inspired by the redesigned Bryant Park to the rear of the New York Public Library.
(Two other plans are totally inadequate. They are both neo-moderenist plans for minimalist renovation, one generated by former N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and offered by the state’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), and the other offered by an Italian firm, ASTM, whose allure, if any, is largely financial.)
Architecture Here and There 
I don’t disagree with you, Lazy, but you have missed my point. Once sensible policies are enacted, things can change very quickly. That’s what happened on crime under Giuliani, and it can happen on finances if Penn is rebuilt. The property and land values of Midtown would skyrocket.
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Skyrocketing property values ARE the problem. It’s what made people leave in the first place. You cant have TOP tier expensive office space and get people there in a transportation system people use as a personal toilet….A McKinsey report released two weeks ago found that “office attendance has stabilized at 30 percent below prepandemic norms” and nearly two-thirds of those still going to offices were doing so only a few days a week. As a result, the report estimated that worldwide office values would decline by $800 billion.
Penn station doesn’t need to be rebuilt, it would serve no purpose and Rot again.
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Again, Lazy, you have missed the point. Rebuilding Penn will turn those property values around in short order; that will turn the social problems around. This will happen just by rebuilding Penn. Either it will happen or it won’t happen, but it seems obvious that it will not happen without some duex ex machina, which is ezactly what something like this rebuild Penn idea can represent. Maybe I’m wrong, but what do you see happening other than this that can turn around both of the problems that you see? Maybe nothing. If so, too bad, but it makes sense to try rebuilding Penn.
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No, you’re missing the point. Hell not even paying attention to the point. Skyrocketing property proces were acceptable as long as companies desired to be there. But congestion, decrepit infrastructure and high rents don’t justify it.
You want to build a stable, when the barns on fire and horse going up with it.
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I don’t disagree with you, Lazy, but you have missed my point. Whether regarding crime or public finances, once sensible policies are brought to bear, things can change very quickly. A decision to rebuild Penn Station, for example, would so boost property values in Midtown that the financial problems you have just described would be solved.
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Bravo, David! Please keep highlighting the inspired work of Richard Cameron and his colleagues!
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Let me repeat as much as I’d like it. Rebuilding Penn is a waste of money.
With federal approval of New York’s environmental assessment, most of the federal, state, and local obstacles to New York City’s cordon pricing plan — which almost everyone erroneously calls a congestion pricing plan — have been removed. But there is still one more: New Jersey is suing to stop the plan because New Jersey residents would pay a large share of the costs yet get few of the benefits. New York is betting price fees will rake in an additional billion dollars a year to pay for a decrepit transit system New York allowed to rot.
Cordon fee will inevitably fail.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has about $40 billion in debt; it has a $60 billion maintenance backlog; plus it has more than $20 billion in unfunded health care obligations….
It’d be cheaper, and better to simply architectural refurbish the existing Penn and Port Authority bus terminal.
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Like so many other people, you do not consider anything beyond the bottom line, and you are probably wrong about that, too!
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My response to your comment didn’t take on my blog, Lazy, but you probably can assume how I’d respond – by saying that like other people who only judge by the bottom line, they don’t even consider the more important values involved. And you are probably wrong about the bottom line, too, since your calculation leave out the skyrocketing land and building values that would be the result of rebuilding Penn Station. Cheers, David
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A quaint stroll thru NYC subways Inundated with litter, trash, needle strewn remnants.
Or the news Alvin Bragg is bringing up charges on ex Marine who choked to death deranged man named Neely who was assaulting train passengers, as he’d done to so many SO MANY times before.
Point is, this is Penn Stations future if it’s built. I emphasize If….
Penn Station was horribly expensive to maintain even back in its heyday when hundreds of busy trains ran thru its corrudors….And originally the proposal was that a high rise building would be added to top it to seek rent attractive offices with direct access to it. Downscale market 60s midtown Manhattan and Historic preservation committees opposed projects. In current economic climate rebuilding Penn is not only financially unwise, it’s impossible. Long Island rail carries less than Two thirds it’s passenger volumes, the Hudson tunnels which carry 50% nations train traffic are still falling apart.
When HALF the nations rail traffic flows thru a single tunnel and it collapses on evening news…….
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Always reading from the ticker on the next quarter rather than the ticker on the next century, eh, Lazy? Remember how Giuliani and Bloomberg turned NYC around in just a decade? (And that decade included 9/11.) It can happen even faster in the markets. When the city keeps making insane financial, criminal and social policy, the results will contineu toward insanity. If you can get the policies right – and it ain’t that difficult – the results will turn upward fast. Recent history proves it.
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Giuliani only addressed Crime problem, he did nothing address decades financial imploding time bombs or cities infrastructure. More importantly Giuliani was largely dealing with low value property crimes and the Mob, he was not handling effects modern Synthetic drug pharmocology or mass migrants. An underlying problem is that blacks/hispanics and whites remain culturally immiscible, leading each to fear one another. Blacks fear they will be discriminated against; whites fear they will be victims of crime or, at the least, accused of being racist. These fears make it easier to Simply NOT to interact with one another, but also make it hard for law enforcement agencies and the justice system to cross racial lines and Cops have too hard a time dealing crime, because modern media makes any arrest a social injustice.
I say this with heavy heart , New York City will not be saved. Progressive policies that neuter cops and reward bad guys are but response to VOTER BASE. Years ago I wrote how low iQ groups cannot sustain a democracy or beneficial form of personal governance.
Beyond that effects of mass migration pander as voter base. Average Hispanic and Black iQs are in the mid 80s. It has been tracked for 4-5 generations, (and proven via high-school dropout rates) and is effectively permanent. finally, 0bama, for all his racial agitation and instigation of racial animosity, is objectively an anti-black President. His insistence on open borders means that large numbers of Mexicans and Central Americans can enter the US and compete directly with working class and underclass blacks. These immigrants are also strongly anti-black, and where they exist in large numbers, as in southern California, they are carrying out ethnic cleansing across the LA area.
iQ in the 80s? Only less than 3% of Whites and 2% Asians score that low. You can’t hand reigns of civilization over that bottom 3% and expect long-term positive outcomes and you cant have that be majority voter base. Violence, fanaticism, poor decision making, inept financial literacy follow these brackets. Geopolitical stability and personal freedoms cannot survive average iQ below 90. Lock up and leave.
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