50 years ago Penn Station was demolished

[zstripe]

I wonder,if '' Mr. Peabody's coal Train,has hauled it away''.
Cheers,
Frank,zstripe

[sailormatlac]

Sorry to make this pop up again but these pictures are quite impressive!

Penn Station was probably the only standing building in North America that could give you a glimpse at how breath-taking a bath house complex could be in Imperial Rome! As stated by Vincen Scully in an article I just read about Penn Station :

"It’s time we gave all citizens of this metropolis the opportunity to once again enter New York like a god."

Gotta love that big clock with "Eastern Standard Time" engraved on it! Honestly, the only building I saw that had the same kind of shear hugeness is Brussels Court Hall in Belgium.

Thanks you for the link! It's completely crazy to see such fine works turned into rubble! Makes no sense, except in business term as stated. I always admired how old companies had a sense of pride. Even practical buildings as mills and factories were almost industrial castles glorifying the corporate image. Always makes me laugh when I see Canadian Pacific actual paint scheme. Let's talk about a Class I railway that doesn't bother having a real corporate image since 4 decades... As visible as a faint ghost!

I'm quite glad they saved in extremis Palace Station in Quebec City (built to match Château Frontenac). Just like Ottawa and so many other cities, they also thought it would be a "great" idea to eliminate all tracks from downtown... BIG DEAL! I'm always amazed how a country like Canada, always boasting about its territorial expansion with the help of trains, almost managed to totally eradicate all railway traces as of it was a life-threatening cancer. I'm speechless.

That's why architecture is a non-existent field these days - decorating public buildings to make proud statements no longer has a place in a bottom line, profit-dominated culture.

Being an architect, I must admit that kind of thoughts doesn't exist anymore. The funny part being that doing proud statement isn't always obtained by wasting cash but just by using it cleverly were it counts. Even when they are making "bold architectural statement", it's often done with a shortview mindset with the cheapest "fake" substitution material possible. I recently visited some corporate building hall. God, looks quite good from afar, but what a turn off when you actually walk in. Staircases look like poured in place concrete sculpture. Then you find how they are just empty drywall shells that won't sustain heavy use. In two years it will be ugly as can be and beaten down like an old Alco diesel without the inherent charm of these steel beasts!

I recently participated in a conference about public school buildings earlier this month. A buidling department manager from a large school board explained a precise view about budgets, repair bills, long term cost, quality of building material, maintenance, air quality, fire resistance, name it. It was a two decades synthesis of anything implied in running properly large buildings. They ended up having 20-year old school statistically having 60 years of wear because of cheap construction while old schools from the 1890-1920s were in fairly better shape and faring better scores. In the end, after his lengthy exposé, he told us boldy how building cheap was terribly costly for a huge real estate owner. To quote him: "Maybe it's time we goes back to the old proven idea that a public building should be designed to last at least a hundred years without needing major refurbishing." And that came from someone who doesn't care about architectural nostalgia and frivolous ideas, only cold facts, running costs, ease of maintenance and properly fulfilling its function.

Enough rants! Back to trains!

Matt