Pennsylvania Station 1910-1963

[Don31]

Grand Central Terminal's 100 year anniversary is coming up and I found some construction facts interesting. I had always been under the impression that the original Penn Station was much more vast and grand than Grand Central. I guess I was wrong:

"While Pennsylvania Station opened earlier and to rave reviews, it could not compare to Grand Central in magnitude. Penn Station and its yards spanned 28 acres. Grand Central covered 70. Penn Station had 16 miles of rails that converged into 21 tracks serving 11 platforms. The comparable figures for Grand Central originally were 32 miles, 46 tracks and 30 platforms. Grand Central required twice as much masonry and nearly twice the steel that Penn Station did. Fifteen hundred columns were installed to support the street-level deck and the buildings that would rise on it. Another $800,000 was spent on steel reinforcement, not needed for the terminal itself, but to support a skyscraper that eventually might rise above it. The terminal alone cost $43 million to build, the equivalent of about $1 billion today; the entire project set the Central back about $80 million."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/ny...ars-later.html

All these figues are true. However, I think one of the things that made Penn Station remarkable was its main waiting room, which was the largest interior space in the city and one of the largest public spaces on the planet.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The Penn Station main waiting room was the largest for three years, until GCT opened.

The above ground building of Penn Station was larger than GCT (about 1.5 acres I think), and it had a 225 foot arcade that led from 7th Ave to the waiting room. But the main room was slightly smaller, although higher.

PS........277 x 103 x 150
GCT......287 x 120 x 125

[Don31]

True. But it was the height that was so stunning. I hope I'm not giving the wrong impression, I'm not dissing GCT at all....

[TREPYE]

What is the size/dimension in comparison to Calatravas hub at the WTC??

[ZippyTheChimp]

The PA description is - 1.5 times the size of GCT.

I don't know how accurate these numbers are:

The oculus at floor level: 350 x 145 (widest point).
At street level: 320 x 100.

From the floor to the highest point of the roof: 160

[TREPYE]

I look forward to hearing about folks who have had a chance to go to both and compare their impressions of the stations. I suspect that WTC will be incredible but still not as nice a Penn.

[Walt Gekko]

One thing that might have saved the original Penn Station would have been if the original architects realized that they might need to build structures on top of the old Penn Station years later, it could still have been up today, but then we might not still have Grand Central and other places like it.

As much as it pained people to see the old building destroyed, the big problem of the time was not just that more people were living in the suburbs, but a new home was going to be needed for a modern Madison Square Garden to replace the one between 49th and 50th streets that was rapidly becoming obsolete (but could have been kept as a concert venue long after the new one opened had they been smart since the old one could have been reconfigured to seat 12-13,000 for concerts and smaller events too big for the new Garden for many years until Worldwide Plaza was built in the mid-to-late 1980s). In this case, it was a "necessary evil" that likely kept that area from becoming even more crime-ridden than it wound up being if the old Penn Station had remained (in my view, that area would have had a lot more crime during the 1970s, '80s and early '90s given the way the old Penn Station was built). The irony is, the current MSG has actually been around longer than the old one was and will be for some time to come as the oldest building in use by the NHL and eventually will be for the NBA as well.

There now is a move to in the next decade or so build a new MSG from 28th-30th Streets and 9th-10th Avenues and rebuild the old Penn Station as it was. While I like this idea, what I would do with Penn Station is build a slightly smaller version of the old station, keeping the existing 2 Penn Plaza office building and entrances to the current Penn Station on 32nd and 34th and 7th (west of 7th in the latter case) and having the grand entrance on 8th Avenue instead of 7th, also doing it to allow future construction of office towers on top of a new Penn Station as well.

This would be probably be about 10-15 years out, but well worth it in my view.

[Don31]

One thing that might have saved the original Penn Station would have been if the original architects realized that they might need to build structures on top of the old Penn Station years later, it could still have been up today, but then we might not still have Grand Central and other places like it.

One of the original concepts for Penn Station envisioned a hotel atop the structure, but the idea was veteoed by the Pennsylvania Railroad.