A brand new proposal for the renovation of Pennsylvania Station is formally on the desk, and it contains returning to the prepare station to its pre-demolition Beaux Arts model and relocating the Madison Square Garden (MSG) area.
The historic Penn Station was designed by McKim, Mead, and White, and was accomplished in 1910. It spanned Manhattan’s Seventh and Eighth Avenues and thirty first and thirty third Streets, and was modeled after the Roman baths of Caracalla, a grand area meant for all.
The brand new renderings point out a row of Doric columns lining the entrance of Vornado Realty Belief’s PENN 2 enterprise middle on the station’s Seventh Avenue entrance to create a classical facade. The commuter corridor is paying homage to that of the unique station, full with excessive ceilings, iron and glass entrances, and a duplicate of the unique clock; it could be linked throughout the James A. Farley Submit Workplace by way of an underground tunnel to Moynihan Prepare Corridor.
To create a public plaza the scale of Bryant Park, the plan proposes leveling the present round trendy MSG constructing. In 2023, theManhattan Neighborhood Board only extended a five-year operating permit to the MSG—the shortest ever granted by town—indicating a attainable relocation in order that the station can as soon as once more broaden.
The Grand Penn Neighborhood Alliance (GPCA) introduced its plans on the New York Historic on Tuesday, March 11. Alexandros Washburn, former New York Metropolis Chief of City Design, headed the marketing campaign, which is funded by the Washington, D.C. nonprofit Nationwide Civic Artwork Society (NCAS), which advocates for classical structure in federal buildings.
As a chief architect of the Moynihan Prepare Corridor improvement challenge, Washburn estimates that the overhaul would value roughly $7.5 billion, with $3.5 billion earmarked for the relocation of MSG. The estimated price ticket remains to be “$1 billion lower than the schemes proposed by New York State and Amtrak,” in response to the GPCA’s web site.
“What we’re doing right here is finally a civic transfer,” Washburn advised Hyperallergic.
As commuting to New York has elevated quickly, with greater than 600,000 individuals passing by means of the station each day, the transfer to accommodate this growth is lengthy overdue. A “new” station unencumbered by the world might stand to double current capacity to 48 trains per hour, together with new security and accessibility options. Many who commute with regularity can cite countless issues and delays usually as a result of wire- and signal-related points. An addition to the station might additionally result in the revival of old train lines.
The board of the NCAS, based in 2002, contains Thomas D. Klingenstein, who’s a far-right political scientist, a Trump ally, and board chair of the conservative Claremont Institute suppose tank—the latter of which donated more than $10.5 million to Republican campaigns and PACs within the 2024 election season.
The Penn Station proposal appears to proceed President Trump’s executive order mandating a return to classical architecture for government buildings over modernist kinds. The newly issued policy, titled the Stunning Federal Civic Structure government order, is geared toward selling a type of civic structure meant to “beautify public areas” by emphasizing designs that “respect regional heritage and align with America’s classical traditions.”
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has pushed again in opposition to this order with a memo emphasizing “that mandating structure kinds stifles innovation and harms native communities.”
Earlier this week, the Black Lives Matter mural was dismantled in Washington, D.C. after Republican lawmakers threatened to chop tens of millions in transportation funding. Whereas the 2 tasks should not linked, it’s changing into more and more clear that the American panorama, very similar to its political entrance, is quickly altering—and that Penn Station could also be subsequent.
