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(rshsdepot) New York's Penn Station

I notice that the latest issue of the Railway & Locomotive Historical 
Society Newsletter has an article on some of the architectural 
remnants of New York's Pennsylvania Station. Anyone with the 
slightest interest in railroad stations can't help but be mesmerized 
by what was the most stupendous such structure ever built. 
Photographs of the facility still take the breath away and one can 
only react to its demolition four decades ago with bafflement, anger 
and despair.

There have been several excellent books written about Penn Station, 
some told from an engineering or architectural point of view, some of 
them plaintive tributes decrying the demolition. All have been 
specialized publications appealing to niche markets. Now we have a 
new mass market volume, "Conquering Gotham" by Jill Jonnes. The 
author focuses on the planning and building of the station and 
particularly the tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. The book 
is written in the narrative style popular in contemporary historical 
non-fiction, with much emphasis on the characters and personalties of 
the people involved.

The book is definitely a page turner and I read it in three days. 
There are several photographs although it is not a picture book. The 
photos are not all that well reproduced and I found myself constantly 
referring to my other books on Penn Station. Like many of you reading 
this, I have a large collection of railroad books and, as much as I 
treasure them, the sad truth is that most of them are not 
particularly well written by the standards of mass market 
publications. So it's always a pleasure to read a book on a railroad 
topic written by a professional writer and journalist.

Conquering Gotham
A Guilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and its Tunnels
by Jill Jonnes
Viking Penguin Group, 2007
ISBN 978-0-670-03158-0

Derek Boles
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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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