NEW YORK — The destruction of New York’s Penn Station — built in 1910, demolished in 1963 — is often cited as a seminal moment in the movement to preserve historic buildings. Now, the processes to protect historic structures may be used to prevent redevelopment of the current Penn Station, the crowded, confusing, and largely unloved underground space currently used by Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road, and NJ Transit passengers.
Bloomberg CityLab reports New York’s Historic Preservation Office is proposing that the 2 Penn Plaza office building, the Garden, and the underground station should be added to the National Register of Historic Places, a move which would almost certainly slow the redevelopment proposed by former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and supported in reduced form by his successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul. The move reflects a law requiring the preservation office “to be consulted throughout the project planning process and have the opportunity to make recommendations.”
The historic status is sought mainly to check the redevelopment plan introduced earlier this year by Cuomo and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. That plan called for 10 new skyscrapers to be built, offsetting the cost of rebuilding the station and adding nine new tracks [see “New York governor, MTA unveil proposals …,” Trains News Wire, April 22, 2021]. Hochul introduced her revised version of the plan in November, which projects a cost of $6 billion to $7 billion to rebuild the station, cuts 1.4 million square feet from the redevelopment plan, and calls for decreased building heights. Opponents say a number of historic buildings would have to be torn down for the new skyscrapers and oppose the changes the new buildings would bring to the neighborhood.
Recent press accounts have attempted to tie preservationists to someone placing Madison Square Garden and 2 Penn Plaza into the cue for some style of landmark or historic resource status. We want to be sure you know that ReThinkNYC and various civic and preservationist organizations in the Empire Station Coalition, of which we are a member, in no way support the 1.) status quo at Penn Station, or
2.) Governors Cuomo and Hochul’s plan to keep Penn Station in a revamped basement station under Madison Square Garden.
Rather, we favor construction of a great above ground station( including a modernized recreation of the original among other options) as the centerpiece of a revised and modernized transit plan which would inaugurate a unified regional transit network for New York and its surrounding counties(much like when the subways commenced interboro transit).
We are not sure who is behind using preservation laws to protect Madison Square Garden and 2 Penn Plaza but it may well be a very cynical ploy by someone to detract from the fact that the State of New York, Vornado and the Dolans would like to see the Penn neighborhood obliterated to make way for a Maginot Line of Supertalls, an underground Penn Station and a dated track plan. That becomes a reality only after destroying numerous historic sites, displacing residents and hundreds of small businesses.
The ReThinkNYC plan would materially improve Penn Station and the entire region without destroying the neighborhood first. http://www.rethinkpennstationnyc.org
We look forward in the coming weeks to learning how this happened as much as anyone else does. But it would be the height of absurdity for Madison Square Garden and 2 Penn Plaza to be protected from demolition by landmarks laws while the original Penn Station, the Hotel Pennsylvania, the original Penn Station power station, the Stewart Hotel, St. John the Baptist Church and the Gimbel’s skybridge, among many other worthy sites, were reduced to dust. However this happened, it is both farcical and sad that we have to sift through this noise when such serious issues–and demolitions– are at hand.
The buildings that replaced Penn Station are not historic. They’re tragedies in concrete. And have any of you STAYED at the Hotel Pennsylvania? It’s a DUMP.
D-U-M-P. It’s a really unpleasant place to stay. The lobby is still beautiful with faded grandeur but the guest rooms are NASTY. Trust me, I stayed there. Once. It was cheap, all right. The bathroom was dingy, the room was painted in an awful shade of aqua and I couldn’t wait to leave it.
I think the argument absolutely can be made that these are office buildings no one wants or needs (particularly as the pandemic is radically reshaping office work…my company gave up three additional floors in our building in NOLA because they dont’ think they’ll need them).
What color is Aqua? Swimming pool blue? What does the Hotel PA charge? Last time I stayed in a NY hotel it was with my family in 1959 at the Henry Hudson. In 1984 I solved the Philly and New York hotel room problem by riding the Federal sleeping from Philly to Penn; then setting the alarm clock for the arrival of the Federal back to Philly, then getting on an sleeping again. Philly at 5:30am in those days. Cost me 38 clams I think. It work but boy did I sleep soundly in the sleeper from Philliy to SouthSta the next night! But Penn Sta (NYC; Penn Sta Newark and Baltimore are decent places) how could any new design be much different than what’s there now? I used to know it well 30-40 years ago; DON’T “Landmark” it! Reminds me of the fate of Boston’s old 125 High Street–the only International Style building in Boston. Three weeks before it was due to be imploded one of Boston’s newspaper architectural writers wrote about 125 High and how he had been asked to NOT mention its status as Boston’s only building of that style. The architects were solidly united that 125 High had to go and didn’t want anyone to delay the demolition. I did a job interview there once; luckily I wasn’t hired. Those of you who never went in or better never saw 125 High should consider yourselves lucky!
Hotel PA needs to be preserved as an affordable hotel for middle class visitors to NYC. Beautiful building except for what’s been done with ground floor retail. Under it the passage from Penn to PATH / 6th Ave stations needs to be rebuild and reopened. The historic church needs to be saved. And the ‘powerhouse’, the last still intact (at least on the outside) part of the Penn complex needs to be preserved.
The real estate grab that is happening here is to build more ugly office towers that no one needs as more and more people work remotely or hybrid. There is a huge inventory of no longer needed office space in Manhattan, enough for some firms to bring back workers (for at least a couple days per week) from places like White Plains, especially ones who live in the city but for whom going to Jersey or places like WP is especially difficult.
It’s also about destroying even more of our history and culture just to satisfy greed. And it’s another attack on the homeless, who will lose services in the area.
2 Penn Plaza and Madison Square Garden Arena must go! They are bland spartan 1960s monstrosities. The original Pennsylvania Station should be rebuilt as its foundation remains in place beneath the current Penn Station.
The complex of three buildings including the Hotel Pennsylvania (1919), Pennsylvania Station (1910) and the Farley Post Office aligned from west to east was designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White.
This is a reaction (I hope to Jacob Adams’ point) to the Cuomo Plan to knock down a large part of Midtown around Penn Station and Herald Square and then transfer the land to Vornado, a property developer who was a leading donor to the disgraced former governor. The plan by the current governor scales back and pushes further off into the future the 1950-60-like mass urban renewal program. The plans displayed so far (and work already done or underway) to rebuild the existing station, arena, and office tower within the existing footprint are very good, but plans to raise apartment buildings, small shops, a church or two, several 30-story pre-WW2 office buildings, and the original Penn Station Power House are highly questionable.
“raze” Mr. Turon, not “raise”. Now, at the risk of going waaaaaay off-topic, on to Mr. Engle’s characterization of the Warren court as a gathering of…anti-American radicals. I’ll characterize the 6 “conservatives” on today’s SCOTUS as political hacks, especially ACB. And all or most are members of Opus Dei and tools of Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. And they are determined to turn this nation into a theocracy.
Forget the Constitutional Issue if any. Who in their right mind would want to protect the existing Penn Station passenger areas?!!! (Definitely understand protecting surrounding buildings, especially if in use.)
Read the seminal case of Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City and you will see that the Supreme Court has held that Historic Designation is not a taking of someone’s property because the building remains and can continue to be used.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/438/104
The current court might come to a different conclusion. The earlier decision was made by the Warren Court—a gathering of notorious anti-American radicals. One consequence of the Warren Court’s decision is that it pays to build non-descript unattractive buildings no one wants to save.
Which article in the Constitution or amendment to Constitution provides for “historic designation” of someone else’s property without compensation?