Art: Penn Pals

The New Yorker who yearns to fancy himself in the great tepidarium (warm room) of an ancient Roman bath need go no further than Pennsylvania Station: its main waiting room is almost a duplicate of the hall of the old Baths of Caracalla. The station also has a classical colonnaded facade, broad and elegant staircases, a huge, skylighted concourse with vaulting arches of lacy steel and glass. It smells of past grandeur and wars and old steam and tears and waitin’-for-the-train-to-come-in. All this is going to be torn down because it no longer makes economic sense.

New York, unlike most cities of Europe and elsewhere, has no civic authority to preserve its landmarks. Last week, in the hope that publicity might save the day, 500 architects (the most notable: Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph) banded together with the newly formed Action Group for Better Architecture in New York and marched on Penn Station with signs that said: “Don’t Demolish It! Polish It!”

Designed by the famed architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White (who also created the Morgan Library, the Racquet and University Clubs, and Washington Square Arch), Penn Station was finished in 1910.

Almost as soon as the station was finished, the Pennsylvania Railroad began to tinker with Architect Charles McKim ‘s open spaciousness. Information desks were placed in the middle of the huge halls. Eventually, to get more revenue for the railroad, advertising signs with blinking lights were hung from the walls, stainless steel booths and shops appeared, new cars were spotlighted on revolving turn tables. The inside of Penn Station became what Lewis Mumford calls “a vast electronic jukebox.”

Last year Irving Felt, chairman of the Madison Square Garden Corp., made a deal with the financially strapped Pennsylvania Railroad to take a 99-year leasehold on Penn Station’s air rights. According to Felt’s plan, the site would be stripped to ground level (the trains would still come and go below), and a new Madison Square Garden, seating 25,000 persons, would be built on top, flanked by two office buildings, all designed by Los Angeles Architect Charles Luckman.

Says Philip Johnson: in Pennsylvania Station “you realize that man can build nobly.” Replies Promoter Felt: “Fifty years from now, when it’s time for our Center to be torn down, there will be a new group of architects who will protest.”