I'd always been somewhat of a fan of the McKim, Mead and White architectural firm. They designed the original Minneapolis Institute Of The Art building in 1915 and I like that building. They built in the popular Beaux-Arts style, something Frank Lloyd Wright was firmly against, I'm sort of in the middle of the two.
I saw a copy of The Rise and Fall Of Penn Station in the library and brought it home. It's a PBS production, part of their American Experience series. It covers a lot of the story of Pennsylvania Railroad and the solution to getting trains to New York's Manhattan Island. All train lines ended in new Jersey where ferries carried the passengers across the Hudson River to Manhattan. After seeing a Paris train station that had tunnels with electric trains, Gare d'Orsay, President Cassatt hired McKim to design the station.
McKim went ahead with the plans and the station was opened in 1910. Cassatt wouldn't get to see this wonder of the world, he would die four years before the station opened and McKim would die the year before it opened. At least they built a nice statue of Cassatt.
The station was massive and the people of New York were amazed, first from the big hole in the ground and later from seeing the station.
That 2 square block area is where they would dig a huge hole. It's where they started building the tunnels. There's a corresponding hole across the river. The two tunnels met up under the river and there was only a 1/16th of an inch difference in height. Pretty amazing, even by todays standards. While the tunnels were being built they covered over the hole with the station. Here's an inside shot from 1962.
The station had millions of passengers pass through it each year In 1945 the yearly total was over 100 million. In the 1950s trains were dying out, the above ground station was demolished in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden and a hotel. That demolition caused great strides in preserving old buildings across the country. Minneapolis could have benefited from that preservation, many a nice old building was torn down and replaced with an uninteresting glass faced box. Occasionally things get saved, here's one of the eagles that graced the front of the building.
It was an interesting program. I like shows about that sort of thing, I was happy to have watched it.
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