My guess on Penn Station – David Brussat

by David Brussat, contributing writer, architecture

Photo: Brussat, Rebuilt waiting room at the proposed new Penn Station. (By Jeff Stikeman for Rebuild Penn Station)

Not much news lately on the idea of rebuilding Pennsylvania Station as it was originally designed by architects McKim Mead & White in 1910. The station was torn down in 1963 and replaced by the existing mess of a rail hub, underneath a hulking Sports arena.

An excellent and eminently feasible proposal to rebuild the old Penn Station is being pecked to death by ducks.

Surveys suggest that rebuilding Penn Station would be popular – more so than several rival proposals, some better than others, but none with the advantages of rebuilding the old station, updated to adapt to today’s market realities. Restoring its vaulting beauty would bring economic benefits unlike those of any other major development project imaginable today.

Instead, New York’s city and state leaders want to surround a half-assed renovation of the station with ten supertall office buildings – doomed to remain empty as long as the work-from-home phenomenon prevails, undermining the real-estate market possibly for decades.

At a forum yesterday sponsored by the Regional Plan Association and the Municipal Art Society, the convoluted and probably corrupt railroad interests (Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) argued weakly against “through-running,” the concept of treating Penn Station as one stop in a series of stops, as opposed to treating it as it is now: a terminus. Through-running, which many cities in Europe and Asia have embraced, would connect Penn Station and its regional railroads together with far greater efficiency than the current tangled “system.”

The train interests have been coy and secretive about the details or lack of details in their plan, if they even have one. The public deserves to know much more about their plan.

My own interest, and I suspect that of most readers here, is to rebuild Penn Station as it was originally designed. That would boost the regional economy even more than through-running, which – don’t get me wrong! – is a damned good idea. But it seems to me that the idea of rebuilding Penn suffers when the concept of through-running is emphasized by those who back rebuilding the station. Through-running is a worthy, transformative idea, but it lacks pizzazz. Once rebuilding Penn has been settled upon as the main goal, once the idiotic idea of demolishing a whole block of Manhattan south of the station and surrounding it with ten more towers has been jettisoned, and once Madison Square Garden has been relocated, the project of rebuilding Penn would pave the way for New York to adopt through-running quite easily and naturally. But first there’s a lot of work to be done: focus on the big picture, please.

A simple and great idea would run interference for a great but complex idea better than the other way around.

It grieves me to say this, as I am a great fan of ReThinkNYC, whose chairman, Sam Turvey, has been pushing both ideas. He wrote about the forum here. Lately, he seems to emphasize (and overemphasize) through-running at the expense of rebuilding Penn. The railroad interests are finding it easier to kill through-running than to kill the grander idea, in my opinion, because it lacks the glitz that rebuilding Penn would provide. Rebuilding Penn Station would ensure that through-running goes through – and ensure that ramming more towers down the city’s throat will not happen.

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To read other articles by David Brussat: https://rinewstoday.com/david-brussat-contributing-writer/

My freelance writing and editing on architecture and others addresses issues of design and culture locally and globally. I am a member of the board of the New England chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, which bestowed an Arthur Ross Award on me in 2002. I work from Providence, R.I., where I live with my wife Victoria, my son Billy and our cat, Gato. If you would like to employ my writing and editing to improve your work, please email me at my consultancy, [email protected], or call (401) 351-0451.