The Rise and Fall of Penn Station

This post also appears on Fashion Herald, a 34th Street  fashion and retail blog written by Tricia Lewis.

Penn Station, neighbor to the still standing Farley Post Office is mostly remembered as one of New York City's great losses. The photo below shows the station as most choose to remember it -- a beautifully designed structure filled with natural light, that makes train travel look like the best idea ever. For out-of-town travelers new to the city, it was often their first glimpse of New York City.

Penn Station, 1935. Photo:New York Public Library

Before Penn Station was conceived of and built, railroad service terminated in Jersey City on the western side of the Hudson River. From there, passengers boarded a ferry into the city. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) put forth several proposals to bring service into the city, including elevated tracks over the Hudson. It was eventually decided to tunnel under it instead, and an initial excavation began on July 21, 1880 to link the new passage with an existing, partially completed tunnel. Unfortunately this effort ended in disaster for several workers who perished when the tunnel collapsed.

The disaster cast a shadow on the project, and it wasn't until twenty years later that PRR President Alexander Cassatt, announced plans to resume the project, tunneling under the Hudson and into the City at West 34th Street.

Architecture firm McKim, Mead & White was chosen to design the station; construction started on May 1, 1904, and was completed in 1910. September 8, 1910 was the official opening day of the station, though full train service didn't begin until November 27, 1910.

The early stages of construction, photo: Library of Congress

Penn Station in 1910 looking southwest. Photo: Detroit Publishing Co., Library of Congress

Known for their Beaux-Arts style, McKim, Mead & White placed Doric columns along the eastern facade, crowning them with twenty-two eagles. The form used for the eagles was sculpted by Adolph A. Weinman.

























The station had high vaulted glass ceilings that let in natural light and lent a refinery to the terminal, almost as if it was a museum devoted to transportation, rather than just a terminal. This feature of the building also likened it to another architectural jewel that burned down years before, the Crystal Palace exhibition hall, built mostly of glass and steel and erected in Bryant Park in 1853.

Like all good architecture photos, this one is entirely without people.

Penn Station interior, 1910. Photo: Shorpy's

With the increasing practice of traveling by car in the 1950s, the railroad industry began to suffer financially. The station and air rights were eventually sold and plans for the new Penn Station and Madison Square Garden were announced in 1962. In exchange for optioning out the air rights over Penn Station, the PRR was permitted a new station underneath the future site of MSG at no cost to the railroad company and a 25% stake in the new MSG sports complex. Destruction began on October 28, 1963. The following photos are housed at the Museum of the City of New York, and were taken by one of my favorite living photographers, and I'm lucky to say, a friend, Aaron Rose.

The demolition of Penn Station, 1964-1965. Photo: MCNY, Aaron Rose

The demolition of Penn Station, 1964-1965. Photo: MCNY, Aaron Rose

The public outcry against the destruction of Penn Station was significant, though not enough to save the building. It did however, help solidify and unify architectural preservation efforts, and led to founding of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in 1965. 

Additional sources:
The Late, Great Penn Station by Lorraine Diehl (My favorite book on Penn Station.)
Forgotten NY has a lot of digestible facts and pictures
Library of Congress digital photo archive

Alexander Calder Brightens up Some Midtown Green

This post also appears on the Bryant Park blog.

It won't be long now until we have something fun and colorful dominating the lawn, but back in 1993, Alexander Calder's Big Crinkly did the trick. Following in the footsteps of earlier public art exhibits in the park, including Mel Chin in 1981, and George Rickey in 1986, Bryant Park Corporation (then, Bryant Park Restoration Corporation) installed a very colorful Alexander Calder mobile on the lawn in 1993.

Photo: BPC

It was only one year after the iconic bistro chairs and were added to the park, and the lawn is looking lush.This photo taken before photoshop and scanned from a slide, shows a very green lawn.

Photo: BPC

According to the Times, the sculpture was then owned by art collector Andre Emmerich, who was exhibiting it at a 150 acre sculpture park in Duchess County NY called Top Gallant.

To see more of Calder's work, visit the Calder Foundation website, or go to the open air museum Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY. I highly recommend going there. The have a few Calders in their permanent collection, including the one pictured below, and it's a very nice escape from the city. 

Photo: A. Kumer

If outdoor sculpture gardens are your passion, check out this detailed listing by region and state.

September Dedication

This post also appears on the Bryant Park blog.

Seventy-seven years ago today Bryant Park re-opened after an aggressive redesign and renovation led by NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses.

Lifted straight from an older post, which has several in-process construction photos: "Assisted by consulting architect Aymar Embury II, and landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke, Moses transformed the grounds of Bryant Park from a Victorian greensward to a French Classical landscape very similar to today’s design."

Here are a few photos from the dedication ceremony held on September 14, 1934. First, the ceremony. It almost looks as if no one is there listening to Robert Moses, and the fountain water is very still.

But it was well attended. Everyone is clustered behind the fountain, recently moved from its prior location at the other end of the park, just behind the library.

A bird's eye of the lawn, including the hedges, Bryant Park Place along the left on 40th Street, and the Union Dime Savings Bank building at the corner of 40th and Sixth Avenue.

**All Photos, copyright: New York City Parks Photo Archive

Sideshow Corner: Life's Wonders on Display

I have to give proper credit for the title of this post to author Stacy Carlson and her book Among the Wonderful. Carlson's book is a well-researched fictional account of early 1900s sideshows in NYC, specifically Barnum's Living Wonders. Buy and review it.

Though Barnum gets a LOT of credit for reinventing and promoting the Sideshow, it was Samuel W. Gumpertz who brought it to Coney Island in the early 1900s. The images below, all from Pisark, a Coney Island historian associated with the Coney Island History Project, are mostly of Coney Island Wonders.

Lionel the Lion Faced Man, or, Stephan Bibrowski, a Polish native who moved to the States in the early 1900s to perform with Barnum & Bailey's Circus. By the 1920s he was a Coney Island regular. I'm almost positive his image has been used as a heavy metal album cover several times over, but can't find any proof.

Jean-Jaques Libbera, "The Double-Bodied Man." Jean and his brother (attached at Jean's mid-section) Jaques were born in Rome and entertained throughout the 1920s. Jean eventually married and had four children.

 Eddie Masher, a "Living Skeleton" with an advertised weight of 38 pounds at five-foot, seven-inches tall.






















Violet and Daisy Hilton, "English Siamese Twins" and " The Hilton Sisters." These Hilton sisters are much more endearing and interesting than the other famous set. After Violet and Daisy made their last public performance in the 1960s, the sisters worked in a grocery store. They died of Hong Kong flu in 1969.

I have identical twin cousins. This is a birthday card waiting to happen.


Like the Lion Faced Man above, I thought I'd seen these ladies on an album cover, but nope, the angsty soundtrack of my youth had this cover:

Still a really good album, btw. I recently heard it again and am now tempted to buy it for the third time. My first and second copies were played to death.

Other fun things:
*A list of historic Coney Island performers
*Current CI performers (think albino snakes, fire, and fishnets)
*Legitimize your purchase of a bowler hat and/or corset, and learn to swallow swords, charm snakes, and eat fire.

A Relic of Early Modernism in Midtown Manhattan

This post also appears on Fashion Herald.

Recently, I went shopping with co-worker and 34th Street fashion guru Tricia, and she noticed the new Steve Madden store, along with a few guys talking in front of it who did not look like tourists, casual passersby, or purchasers of the 5-inch heels Madden is known for. (That last one is an unfair assumption. I have for sure seen many a gent rock a heel way better than I can in this city.) We accosted them, and after explaining what we do for the district, found out that one was the architect for the store. He dragged us into the street saying that we were right this minute across from one of the most beautiful buildings in the city. This one -- 22 West 34th Street.

Photo: A. Kumer, 34SP

I had noticed the building before, but never thought much past why is there would so much wall and so little window. Also, it's backed up against the Empire State Building on 34th Street, so it isn't as if there's nothing else to look at around there. He had such a glow in his eyes as he described the unusual modernness of this design for the time it was built, that I can only imagine he sees it like this instead.

Photo: NYPL digital collection

Designed by architecture firm De Young, Moscowitz & Rosenberg, and built in 1934, it's known in my trusty AIA Guide to New York City, and the above photo, as the Spear & Company building. Originally established in Pittsburgh in 1843, Spear's was a furniture store known for selling knockoffs of modern-style pieces. In addition to a whole lot of facade wall, the building was equipped with air conditioning, indirect lighting, and an auditorium, and cost about $300,000 to build.

In a 1938 New Yorker Skyline column, Lewis Mumford (also cited in Christopher Gray's 1995 Streetscape column) accused the building's designers of practicing fake functional with that small bank of windows facing east, and covered by the Spear's sign, which was yellow neon on a blue background.

By the early 1990s, many of the windows were painted over, Spears was long gone, and signage on the building looked like this:

Photo: N. Mintz, 34SP

A few years later, and a lot of work on behalf of the 34th Street Partnership, the wall sign is gone, though there is still a remnant of a vertical sign and masked windows.

Photo: 34SP

Now thankfully, (scroll all the way up for a refresher), the windows are unobstructed by vertical signage and paint. Mumford would be at least a bit more pleased.

Additional citation:
The Architectural Guidebook to New York City, by Francis Morrone and James Isla, p. 140

One for the Ladies: The Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain

This post also appears on the Bryant Park blog.

One of the park's oldest and most beautiful monuments is also the first public city monument dedicated to a woman -- the Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain. Designed by architect, landscape designer, and painter Charles Adams Platt, the fountain was originally intended for Corlear's Hook Park in the Lower East Side -- where Shaw Lowell had done the majority of her work -- but was instead erected in Bryant park on the east side, near the William Cullen Bryant monument, and behind the New York Public Library.

The Lowell fountain seen here in it's first location at the east end of the park, just behind the NYPL, 1922. Photo: NYC Transit Museum

This pink granite fountain, with a 32-foot diameter base, and 13-foot diameter upper basin mounted on a classical pedestal was dedicated on May 21, 1912. As part of the 1934 Moses renovation of the park it was moved to its present location, at the west side of the park, near Sixth Avenue.

Bryant Park, seen from the elevated Sixth Avenue train facing east, 1936. Postcard: BPC

Josephine Shaw Lowell's life was devoted to helping those in need. (Oh, the digital age -- you can even "like" her on facebook!) Shortly after she married Charles Russel Shaw, she joined her husband on the front lines of the American Civil War in Virginia, tending to sick and wounded soldiers, and later, was the first woman appointed a Commissioner to the New York State Board of Charities.

The Shaw Lowell fountain, the day of Bryant Park's re-opening after the Moses renovation, September 14, 1934. Photo: New York City Parks Photo Archive

Embedded in the bluestone at the fountain's base, is a commemorative plaque.

Photo: Jacob Bielecki, BPC

THIS FOUNTAIN COMMEMORATES

JOSEPHINE SHAW LOWELL

1843-1905

WIFE FOR ONE YEAR OF A PATRIOT SOLDIER

WIDOW AT TWENTY ONE

SERVANT OF NEW YORK STATE AND CITY IN THEIR PUBLIC CHARITIES

SINCERE AND CANDID COURAGEOUS AND TENDER

BRINGING HELP AND HOPE TO THE FAINTING

INSPIRING OTHERS TO CONSECRATED LABOR

Ninety-nine years after its dedication, the Josephine Shaw Lowell fountain continues to amaze and inspire New Yorkers (watch carefully at the 1:30 mark), local news stations, and numerous park visitors, especially during colder months when the fountain is winterized and looks like this. In warmer moths it also serves as an ad hoc wishing well. Ever wonder what happens with the coins?

100 Years of NYC Newsstands

They haven't changed as much as you'd think. Let's take a look. . . .

Early 1900s - Heins and LaFarge-designed subway stations for the elevated lines

 1913 - "News From Other Cities"























1937 - Eighth Avenue newsstand, photo by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress

1960 - street piles

1989 - open

1989 - closed

1991 - Porn curtain along the top . . .

For more, check out Rachel Barrett's 2008 NYC newsstand project. And, if this inspires you to become a newsstand operator, the process starts here.