This is the unbelievable story of miserable architecture which brings to tears every New Yorker, who cares about the culture heritage of our city. It is the story of the Pennsylvania Station, the country’s busiest transit hub, but also the most hated train station in America. It all started very differently, with a grand Beaux-Arts masterpiece, built in 1901, and designed by New York’s stararchitects of the turn of the century McKim, Mead & White, who modeled the building on the magnificent ancient Roman Baths of Caracalla. Although the building, with its vaulted ceilings clad in marble was hailed for its majestic beauty and architectural triumph, it was demolished in 1963, replaced by what is still considered one of the great architectural crimes of the 20th century. Now, he governor’s call for a $3-billion public-private partnership that will extensively renovate the transportation depot, has given hopes to many. While the proposed plan looks just like one of the banal buildings constructed in New York today, a team of architects and developers have been promoting the use of the original drawings, held in the archive of the New-York Historical Society to reconstruct McKim’s Penn Station, in the same way that the 16th-century tower of Mark’s Square in Venice was reconstructed after it collapsing in 1912. This is not a dream, but a sound possibility that would allow all of us to enter the city like gods, to borrow Vince Scully famous comparison between the old and new Station: “one entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.”
