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(rshsdepot) Penn Station, New York

From 10/28/03 The New York Times


40 Years After Wreckage, Bits of Old Penn Station
By GLENN COLLINS

Forty years ago today at 9 a.m., in a light rain, jackhammers began tearing
at the granite walls of the soon-to-be-demolished Pennsylvania Station, an
event that the editorial page of The New York Times termed a "monumental act
of vandalism" that was "the shame of New York."

This grim anniversary falls in Halloween week, when spirits of the departed
seem so notoriously restive, and those searching for the insistent phantoms
of Penn Station can find them deep in the bustling, claustrophobic warren
that has been carved out of the old terminal's subterranean remains. Ghost
hunters need only know where to look.

Consider, for example, the eroded splotch in the new imitation tile floor
down a corridor off the station's busy rotunda.

Peeking through, and clearly visible, are exposed blocks of surviving pink
Milford granite, adjacent to a section of the original tan
herringbone-patterned bricks that once supplied the paving for Penn
Station's southern carriage drive. Horse-drawn buggies - not to mention Babe
Ruth, Jack Dempsey and five decades of passengers - traversed bricks
identical to these as they rushed to waiting trains.

"It's as if the old station just keeps insisting on coming out," said John
Turkeli, a railroad historian and urban archaeologist who leads a free
monthly public tour of both the Penn Station that is and the spectral Penn
Station that was.

It is true that the wrecking ball knocked down nine acres of travertine and
granite. But thousands of distracted visitors to the current terminal have
no idea that they are surrounded by dozens of minor treasures from the
vanished masterpiece by McKim, Mead & White.

If some Penn Station revivalists see only the tragic loss of architectural
grandeur in such fragmentary and accidental survivals, Mr. Turkeli, 43, sees
them as evidence of the indomitable spirit of the transportation hub, which
opened to the public in 1910. "It just will not be forgotten," he insisted.
Daniel A. Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership, said he
started the architectural tours a decade ago "to increase people's
awareness, so that more great things won't be destroyed." The partnership
sponsors the tours under the umbrella of the Business Improvement District,
which runs along 34th Street from 10th Avenue to Park Avenue South.

"When you see these vestiges of this famous place, you feel even more
regret," he said.

Some of the remains were identified by Lorraine B. Diehl, who used to lead
the tours, and others were discovered by Mr. Turkeli. Those who wish to join
Mr. Turkeli's 90-minute tours should gather at 12:30 p.m. on the fourth
Monday of every month at the tourist information booth in the station's
rotunda; information is available at (917) 438-5123. But since the next tour
will not be until Nov. 24, ghost seekers can, on their own, find many of the
surviving artifacts by investing a bit of time and shoe leather. (However,
visitors must wait for the tour to see a few inaccessible relics in
restricted areas protected by station police.)

A visit to Penn Station - which gave way to the Penn Plaza complex and
Madison Square Garden - might begin outdoors at the statue of Samuel Rea,
president of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1913 to 1925, in front of 2 Penn
Plaza at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street. The statue, by Adolph A. Weinman,
once stood in a niche to the right of the staircase leading down into the
main waiting room.

Next, head south on Seventh Avenue toward 31st Street, and make obeisance to
one of the original 5,700-pound Tennessee-marble stone eagles that once
perched on ledges above the station's grand entrances. This eagle is in
captivity now, fenced in, visited daily by a family of squatter pigeons.
Could they be distant descendants of the flock that once decorated Penn
Station's exterior and flapped under its vaulted roof?

On 31st Street, head west to the middle of the block, and pause to look
south, across the street, at the monumental surviving edifice of the
coal-fired Penn Station power plant, now used for storage and backup power
systems.

Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, head north under the canopy along the
footpath of the driveway (now barred to vehicles for security reasons). Make
a left into the terminal building, then pause atop the escalators. This is
the location of the original grand staircase into the main waiting room; the
Rea statue was once enshrined at the right.

Look down at the rotunda below, site of the old main waiting room. It was
patterned after the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and once soared 15 stories to
a vaulted ceiling. The big room, Mr. Turkeli noted, "then as now, never had
a bench in it."

"It has never really been," he said, "a place to wait."

After descending on the escalator, head left to a corridor marked "For
Passenger Concourse Use Only," adjacent to the Grove Snack Shop. If it is
between 6 and 10 a.m., or 4 and 8 p.m., it is permissible to stroll halfway
down the corridor to view the eroded section of the previously mentioned
floor tiles and see the remains of the building's signature granite and its
herringbone bricks.

Another section of these bricks has struggled out from under the asphalt on
the opposite side of the rotunda. Without entering the off-limits corridor
marked "Employees Only," visitors can stand at the portal and observe, back
near the elevator, a swath of the remnant of the station's northern carriage
drive.

Back at the center of the rotunda, the futuristic waiting room for Acela and
Metroliner trains occupies the former men's and women's waiting rooms. At
the site of the current departure board, with its tiny digital clock, once
stood a windowed arch beneath a large ticking station clock.

Walk left, skirting the curve of the glass-enclosed waiting room, and head
straight back to the far wall, at the West Gate of Tracks 5 and 6. There,
heading down to the train level, is a remaining original staircase of brass
and wrought iron (all the others have been replaced by escalators).

Walking left to the baggage-claim signs, visitors will see a 1948 bronze
plaque that had been affixed to the original station walls, honoring
baggage-department employees who died in World War II, from Joe R. Adams to
Frederick W. Zahodnick.

Behind the wall, in the baggage area restricted to the public (but visible
on Mr. Turkeli's tour), are four poignant artifacts of the Penn Station
past. Upon the floor survives a section of the original glass bricks that
brought natural light from the station's skylight down to the passageways
and train level.

Nearby, on the original wall of ceramic tile, a fading painted directional
sign to the East Gates is still visible. The "E" and "G" have surrendered to
time, leaving the Scrabblish message "AST ATES."

Next to a wall is what is believed to be the last surviving elevator cage,
with its dusty grill. And nearly obscured behind an Everest of heating ducts
is the surviving cast-iron train indicator for Track 1.

Outside the baggage area, in the public corridor paralleling the modern row
of Amtrak ticket windows, an impromptu gallery of historic photographs has
been affixed to the pillars. Depicted are the original waiting room, a
station facade and 1910 pictures of the vaulting, 10-story-high main
concourse, with staircases plunging to the train level, like the one at
Tracks 5 and 6.

"There's a lot of interest in these photos," said Michael J. Gallagher, the
assistant superintendent of station operations, as he stood near one at the
pillars. "People study them, and they constantly ask us why the station
looks like it does now."

So, what is his habitual answer? He sighed, "What can I tell you?"

Those interested in a longer visit should head down the stairs past the
train announcer's booth into the Long Island Rail Road station. To the
right, after the long corridor toward Seventh Avenue, the sleek new ticket
windows (under the destination boards) are just about where the old ones
were in the original station.

Also from the original station, a 30-foot-wide, Tuscan red, cast-iron
partition, with beveled-glass windows, stands guard at the portal for the
ticketed waiting area, adjacent to the gray police booth under the American
flag.

After leaving Penn Station, visitors should also seek out the street-level
entrance to the Long Island Rail Road terminal on 34th Street near Seventh
Avenue. There, they can find a working four-sided clock, suspended on cables
and believed by Mr. Turkeli to have been in the original Long Island
terminal.

Those who have completed the tour, and have been saddened by an
architectural loss of such immensity, might appreciate a bit of cheering up.
In the end, the destruction of what the Municipal Art Society termed "one of
the great monuments of classical America" led to the creation of the
Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965.

"And that led to the rescue of Grand Central Station," Mr. Turkeli said,
"which could have met the very same fate."

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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