Rewind: The Destruction of Penn Station

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2021

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To celebrate the opening of Moynihan Train Hall, a new commuters' wing at Penn Station catering to both Amtrak and Long Island Railroad train passengers, we’re going to tell the entire story of Pennsylvania Station and Pennsylvania Railroad over two episodes, using a couple older shows from our back catalog. This is PART TWO. Why did they knock down old Pennsylvania Station? The original Penn Station, constructed in 1910 and designed by New York’s greatest Gilded Age architectural firm, was more than just a building. Since its destruction in the 1960s, the station has become something mythic, a sacrificial lamb to the cause of historic preservation. As Vincent Scully once said, “Through Pennsylvania Station one entered the city like a god. Perhaps it was really too much. One scuttles in now like a rat.” In this show we rebuild the grand, original structure in our minds — the fourth largest building in the world when it was constructed — and marvel at an opulence now gone. PLUS: We show you where you can still find remnants of old Penn Station by going on a walking tour with Untapped Cities tour guide Justin Rivers. THIS SHOW WAS ORIGINALLY RELEASED AS EPISODE 254 — FEBRUARY 16, 2018 boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
0:03.1	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:06.5	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:16.9	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:20.1	And this is part two of our look at the history of Penn Station.
0:24.9	Using a couple older shows from our catalog, an in recognition of the opening of Moynihan Train Hall.
0:32.2	The sparkling new hall which opened up within the James A. Farley Post Office building.
0:37.5	Now in last week's replay of the show from the year 2009, we talked about the construction of Penn Station.
0:44.2	And stopped that story more or less on the date November 27, 1910.
0:50.2	When the original Penn Station opened to the public after nine years of construction.
0:55.2	And on that day, 100,000 New Yorkers pushed inside to tour the massive Bozart's masterpiece.
1:03.5	This was more than an idle curiosity.
1:06.2	It was a new gateway to the city, modeled after the great structures of Europe.
1:11.7	It was a thrilling and inspiring way to depart or arrive in New York.
1:17.2	However, just over 50 years later, the station would be destroyed, replaced with a massive arena and train station buried underground.
1:29.0	With this new subterranean Pennsylvania station, it was as though New Yorkers had suddenly decided it was utterly embarrassed to even have a train station.
1:39.8	And today, of course, we ask how could such a magnificent structure be demolished?
1:47.3	How was this decision made to destroy this unique and wonderful thing?
1:53.4	But more literally, how exactly did they destroy the station?
1:57.4	How did they build the new arena, Madison Square Garden, and build this new underground station, all without stopping the trains?
2:06.6	In this show, which was released in February of 2018, we'll attempt to answer those questions.
2:13.8	And Tom and I are joined on this show by Justin Rivers of Untapped Cities, who led us to some interesting old vestiges of the old Majestic Penn Station,
	...

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