The original Penn Station was demolished. That’s a good thing.

This originally appeared on a website I maintained about the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak and commuter rail, which is shutting down later this month. I’m preserving it here on the Redux. 

Originally published October 30, 2013

50 Years On, Why We Might Not Want to Mourn Penn Station’s Passing

To mark the 50th anniversary of the start of demolition of New York’s original Penn Station, The Atlantic Cities reprinted a series of photographs taken of the building in 1962 for the Historic American Buildings Survey. The pictures capture the station in all its monumental beauty: the soaring glass, the arches, the legendary ceiling... and all that light. It cannot be denied that New York lost an architectural treasure when the 1910 structure designed by McKim, Mead, and White was torn down to make way for Madison Square Garden.

Looking at the images another way, though, reveals something else: long exterior blocks of sheer neoclassical walls, repetitive doric columns, yawning windows and stairs all out of proportion to human patrons and the surrounding streetscape. Penn Station, while magnificent, was more a statement of grandeur than a vibrant urban hub.

Today’s Penn Station, for all its cramped ugliness, is midtown’s throbbing heart (albeit with clogged ventricles). Millions navigate its crazy corridors via dozens of entrances and exits, all of which support busy retail and multi-modal transportation services. On the street level, Penn Station, while ignoble, is no imposing barrier. It fits into the flow of surrounding streets and therefore does the job it was built to do, which is increasingly miraculous given that it was designed to handle far fewer travelers than it does today.

Penn Station needs to be replaced, the sooner the better. It is a security nightmare, overcrowded nuisance for regular users and unwelcoming puzzle for visitors to the Big Apple. But the lessons to be learned in designing a new station should incorporate those elements which, in many ways, made Penn Station ’68 better than Penn Station ’10. If we could magically switch today’s Penn Station with the original, that would not be optimal. New York City today needs a station that combines great architecture with ease-of-use, free flow and integration with the surrounding city. This should be the goal of stakeholders as the city moves forward with redevelopment plans.