紐約 Penn Station 昔今對比，不勝懷念：Today’s version is humiliating and bewildering.

紐約時報的英文版和中文摘要，大異其趣：該報的建築評論員說新車站令人迷惑.....


When the Old Penn Station Was Demolished, New York Lost Its Faith ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/.../old-penn-station-pictures-new-york.html
2 days ago - There was a time when New York City had the gateway it deserved. ... When Penn Station became during the mid-1960s a subterranean rat's ...

Farewell to Penn Station - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/1963/10/30/archives/farewell-to-penn-station.html
Until the first blow fell no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism ...

Opinion | Penn Station Reborn - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/30/opinion/penn-station-reborn.html



Sep 30, 2016And this week he announced a plan to revamp Penn Station. Still entombed beneath Madison Square Garden ...


Opinion | Penn Station, Now and Always - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/opinion/penn-station-now-and-always.html
Jul 10, 2017 - In 1964, Penn Station, with its soaring vaults and sunlight, was demolished and replaced by a claustrophobic labyrinth that weighs on the spirits ...



PAST TENSE

When the Old Penn Station Was Demolished, New York Lost Its Faith

Today’s version is humiliating and bewildering.


One of Penn Station’s 22 famous eagles being removed from the building’s one remaining facade. The statues ended up in far-flung places like the New Jersey Botanical Garden and on the roof of Cooper Union. July 12, 1966.CreditCreditJack Manning/The New York Times



By Michael Kimmelman
April 24, 2019

There was a time when New York City had the gateway it deserved.

Demolished more than half a century ago, the former Pennsylvania Station by McKim, Mead & White was hardly the first great building in town to face the wrecking ball. The Lenox Library by Richard Morris Hunt and the old Waldorf-Astoria by Henry Hardenbergh on Fifth Avenue also came down. For generations, New Yorkers embraced the mantra of change, assuming that what replaced a beloved building would probably be as good or better.

The Frick mansion, by Carrère and Hastings, replaced the Lenox Library. The Empire State Building replaced the old Waldorf.

Then, a lot of bad Modern architecture, amid other signs of postwar decline, flipped the optimistic narrative.


When Penn Station became during the mid-1960s a subterranean rat’smaze, the city seemed to be heading very definitely south. The historic preservation movement, which rose from the vandalized station’s ashes, was born of a new pessimism.

Looking east from Ninth Avenue, the razed blocks of the Tenderloin neighborhood that would become the site of Penn Station. July 14, 1904.





ImageLooking east from Ninth Avenue, the razed blocks of the Tenderloin neighborhood that would become the site of Penn Station. July 14, 1904.


People today forget that the original station’s construction, shortly after the turn of the last century, caused its own tumult. Several midtown blocks needed to be leveled, which meant displacing thousands of residents from the largely African-American community in what was once known as the Tenderloin district in Manhattan. The emptied lot, awaiting McKim’s masterpiece, now looks almost comically vast in photographs.

You have 4 free articles remaining.Subscribe to The Times



The building that opened in 1910 — its concourse longer than the nave of St. Peter’s in Rome, its creamy travertine quarried, like the ancient Colosseum’s, from Tivoli, its ceiling 138 feet high, its grand staircase nearly as wide as a basketball court — was a “beautiful Beaux Arts fortress,” as the architect Vishaan Chakrabarti has put it.

Grand Central Terminal, at Park Avenue, by the architects Warren and Wetmore, created a bustling new urban hub intricately woven into the fabric of the surrounding streets. By contrast, Penn Station had its fancy portes cochères for the railroad’s well-heeled customers, and 84 huge, somber Doric columns, with 22 roosting eagles guarding the entrances.

Inside and out, the building was meant to be uplifting and monumental — like the Parthenon on steroids — its train shed and waiting room a skylit symphony of almost overwhelming civic nobility, announcing the entrance to a modern metropolis.

The vast train shed and main waiting room of the old Penn Station, circa 1910.CreditMcKim, Mead & White





Image
The vast train shed and main waiting room of the old Penn Station, circa 1910. CreditMcKim, Mead & White


With its swarming crowds and dust motes dancing in shafts of smoky light, the station was catnip to midcentury photographers, filmmakers, artists and architects. It was the architectural embodiment of New York’s vaulted ambition and open arms.

Alas, by the Depression, the building had already begun to decline, and by the mid-1950s, the Pennsylvania Railroad was bleeding money — a victim of cars, planes and general urban decline. Interstate highways and commercial air travel, buoyed by lavish government subsidies, were taking a toll on train ridership. Once bright and gleaming outside, the station, which cost a fortune to maintain, was now increasingly grimy, like the streets around it. Shops were shuttering where businessmen who missed the 5:45 to Trenton used to pick up chocolates for their wives.

The Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional, with service to Washington, awaiting the “All Aboard." March 17, 1955.CreditSam Falk/The New York Times





Image
The Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional, with service to Washington, awaiting the “All Aboard." March 17, 1955.CreditSam Falk/The New York Times

Image
An art student capturing the station in its twilight years. Oct. 27, 1964.CreditMeyer Liebowitz/The New York Times
Image
The main waiting room of Penn Station, with demolition in progress in the background. Jan. 20, 1964.CreditEddie Hausner/The New York Times


On top of which, as Ada Louise Huxtable, the former Times architecture critic, wrote in 1966: “Functionally, the station was considerably less than noble. The complexity and ambiguity of its train levels and entrances and exits were a constant frustration.” Except for its glass-and-iron waiting room, she added, the station “was a better expression of ancient Rome than of 20th-century America.”

So it wasn’t altogether shocking when railroad executives offered the air rights for the property for $50 million (nearly ten times that amount in today’s dollars). New York could downsize its station, stick it underground, add a new sports arena and office tower on top and reboot itself for the rest of the century. To pragmatists, that sounded like progress.
More on Penn Station
Michael Kimmelman and Vishaan Chakrabarti on an ambitious proposal to reimagine the transit hub.
Opinion
Penn Station RebornSept. 30, 2016



In retrospect, entombed beneath Madison Square Garden and a commercial building too mediocre to rise even to the level of good or bad, the new Penn Station represented a city disdainful of its gloried architectural past.

Replacing the old station involved an engineering feat: sliding a gigantic steel deck over the working tracks and platforms so the station could still function even while the drum-shaped Garden rose above it.

Sunny advertising touting the arrival of Madison Square Garden. Oct. 27, 1964.CreditMeyer Liebowitz/The New York Times





Image
Sunny advertising touting the arrival of Madison Square Garden. Oct. 27, 1964.CreditMeyer Liebowitz/The New York Times

Image
During the demolition, a view into Penn Station’s main waiting room, which was still in use as the building was torn down. July 6, 1965.CreditArthur Brower/The New York Times
Image
A view of the same scene, looking the opposite direction. July 6, 1965.CreditArthur Brower/The New York Times

The gutted remnants of the building evoke the feeling of ancient ruins. June 22, 1964.CreditEddie Hausner/The New York Times





Image
The gutted remnants of the building evoke the feeling of ancient ruins. June 22, 1964.CreditEddie Hausner/The New York Times


Surreal photographs show crowds in the old waiting room seemingly oblivious to the wrecking crews dismembering the station around them. Moody black-and-white images of a half-demolished train shed bring to mind scenes of London during the Blitz or the crumbling ruins of ancient Babylon.


The sculpted eagles lowered by cranes from atop the giant columns look like flags at half-mast. Older salarymen with their hats on and younger ones without hats passed beneath banners hung from the columns promising a new era. A sign in one of the station’s underground hallways read, “Close It We Must To Build Your New Station.”

Madison Square Garden under construction. Oct. 25, 1966.CreditNeal Boenzi/The New York Times





Image
Madison Square Garden under construction. Oct. 25, 1966.CreditNeal Boenzi/The New York Times

A construction sign blocking off a walkway. Jan. 20, 1964.CreditEddie Hausner/The New York Times





Image
A construction sign blocking off a walkway. Jan. 20, 1964.CreditEddie Hausner/The New York Times

The current Penn Station services some 600,000 travelers daily. Feb. 26, 1968.CreditWilliam E. Sauro/The New York Times





Image
The current Penn Station services some 600,000 travelers daily. Feb. 26, 1968.CreditWilliam E. Sauro/The New York Times


Conceived to handle fewer than 200,000 passengers, the replacement Penn Station is today the busiest transit hub in the Western Hemisphere, through which more than 600,000 commuters pass each day — an experience as humiliating and bewildering as Grand Central remains inspiring and exalted.

Plans by Albany to paint lipstick on the pig, widening some corridors and extending the station into the old McKim-designed Post Office across Eighth Avenue are only reminders of what was lost.

New Yorkers deserve a better gateway. Half a century later, the city is still waiting.


Correction: April 24, 2019

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to train destinations available from the old Penn Station. Trains traveled to Trenton, among other stations, but not Morristown.


Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic. He was previously The Times's chief art critic and, based in Berlin, created the Abroad column, covering cultural and political affairs across Europe and the Middle East. @kimmelman • Facebook







中文版叫你去懷舊








•圖集： 半個世紀前的紐約舊賓州車站 。上世紀六十年代，紐約舊賓夕法尼亞車站醒目的車站大樓被拆除，轉而變為一個新的全地下式現代化車站。如今，曾經的賓州車站是麥迪遜花園的所在地，但我們仍然能從歷史老照片中一瞥它當年的模樣。