Tom Scocca and Choire Sicha: Miracle on 33rd Street
[Tom Scocca is the author of the blog Scocca on Slate and the forthcoming “Beijing Welcomes You.” Choire Sicha is the co-editor of the Web site The Awl.]
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG and other dignitaries took up ceremonial sledgehammers and knocked over a ceremonial wall of blocks. This was last month, across Eighth Avenue from Pennsylvania Station, and the little drama was meant to symbolize the beginning of its end. Behind them were the wide stairs and Corinthian colonnade of the Farley Post Office, the intended home of Moynihan Station, a scheme that the mayor said “reflects the splendor and majesty of the city.” Representative Jerrold Nadler called the future station “a space worthy of New York.” Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was there to oversee this ridiculous impeachment as well. “Another step out of history’s shadow,” he said.
Simply everyone agrees on this anti-Penn Station sentiment. It is civic shame as civic pride, the city’s shared and ritualized regret over the demolition — “vandalism,” Mr. LaHood said; “desecration,” Mr. Nadler said — of the old Penn Station.
Oh, yes, the Old Penn Station! One hundred years ago this week, its “architectural, mechanical and other wonders” were formally opened to 100,000 travelers and rubberneckers, this paper wrote. (“Station Operated Without Confusion ... Trains for the Most Part on Time.”) And the interior? Apparently, actual stars, pulled from the heavens and set in crystal sockets, once twinkled in the unimaginable heights of the ceiling of its great hall; the seats below were made of polished chestnut wood and narwhal tusk. Their cushions? Stuffed with the down of baby eagles. Temple maidens with degrees in comparative literature would ring silver bells to inform each passenger that his train was ready for boarding....
What has been forgotten in this hysterical nostalgia is that our current Penn Station is also a miracle: pitiless and comically jury-rigged, sure, but miraculous. Three railroads and two subway lines deliver more than half a million people each day directly to almost anywhere except Grand Central. It is one of the great achievements of New York....
Read entire article at NYT
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG and other dignitaries took up ceremonial sledgehammers and knocked over a ceremonial wall of blocks. This was last month, across Eighth Avenue from Pennsylvania Station, and the little drama was meant to symbolize the beginning of its end. Behind them were the wide stairs and Corinthian colonnade of the Farley Post Office, the intended home of Moynihan Station, a scheme that the mayor said “reflects the splendor and majesty of the city.” Representative Jerrold Nadler called the future station “a space worthy of New York.” Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was there to oversee this ridiculous impeachment as well. “Another step out of history’s shadow,” he said.
Simply everyone agrees on this anti-Penn Station sentiment. It is civic shame as civic pride, the city’s shared and ritualized regret over the demolition — “vandalism,” Mr. LaHood said; “desecration,” Mr. Nadler said — of the old Penn Station.
Oh, yes, the Old Penn Station! One hundred years ago this week, its “architectural, mechanical and other wonders” were formally opened to 100,000 travelers and rubberneckers, this paper wrote. (“Station Operated Without Confusion ... Trains for the Most Part on Time.”) And the interior? Apparently, actual stars, pulled from the heavens and set in crystal sockets, once twinkled in the unimaginable heights of the ceiling of its great hall; the seats below were made of polished chestnut wood and narwhal tusk. Their cushions? Stuffed with the down of baby eagles. Temple maidens with degrees in comparative literature would ring silver bells to inform each passenger that his train was ready for boarding....
What has been forgotten in this hysterical nostalgia is that our current Penn Station is also a miracle: pitiless and comically jury-rigged, sure, but miraculous. Three railroads and two subway lines deliver more than half a million people each day directly to almost anywhere except Grand Central. It is one of the great achievements of New York....