OLD STATIONS
NY PENN and WASHINGTON DC
Various Scenarios of Tentatively Planned Improvements
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PENN STATION NEW YORK
In 2014 the Municipal Arts Society sponsored a late entry in a sort of contest to find the best course to take with Penn Station, and there was one clear winner, in both aesthetic and practical terms: because all the other designs were based on the plan to relocate Madison Square Garden, which had just undergone a billion-dollar renovation. Woods Bagot's plan to axe the Hulu Theater (previously the Paramount, which had been enlarged to extreme dimensions by Paramount following their acquisition of the Felt Forum space around 1990) remains the high standard of all the proposals, and it came at a time when the theater was conveniently on the rocks. All the supernumerary further iterations of the proposed Penn Station re-vamp - and there have been many - fall short. We currently have two vaguely defined options being contested: one with the Hulu Theater and one without.
Woods Bagot, 2014
The 2014 design by Woods Bagot also included a "Green" roof garden surmounting the glass station surround, as a public amenity.
No one but the Dolans (who acquired full control of the MSG property in 1997) has ever been able to make the Paramount Theater solvent; and while Hulu might have stood a chance when they took over in 2018, the COVID virus put an end to that, forcing theater operations into the hands of the Dolans. With its bulky 90-foot-high blind wall extending over 400 feet along the 8th Avenue side, surrounding the outside of the original MSG/Penn Station edifice, and extending out over the forecourt of the Felt Forum Theater's original 8th Avenue entrance, the theater, as vastly expanded circa 1990, simply involves too much obstruction for too little gain. (Provided it can be relocated. In comments I had suggested it might be moved to a space on 32nd Street within the Pennsylvania Hotel, and perhaps it could be accommodated in the new building that is noticeably not there now.)
Although Paramount's dreams for the enlarged theater never materialized, in order to achieve the expansion its improbable dimensions had to be forced into the limited space under the MSG Arena by some extreme engineering sleight of hand. The block-and-a-half-wide theater and its huge balcony structures limit the possible options for providing high-volume passenger access from 8th Avenue to Penn Station, because the theater's qausi-theater-in-the-round setup cannibalizes all the space, extending all the way to the existing corner entrances now used by about half the passengers who access the station from the surface, mostly at 33rd Street, and necessitating the entrances' "cramped, narrow" and "claustrophobic" character so bitterly lamented by journalists and particularly by the MTA, though they state emphatically they have no intention of taking the theater.
With the Woods Bagot solution and its more-or-less rightly delineated offspring the problem of restricted passenger access is nicely resolved: by allowing unobstructed access for both passengers and MSG attendees all along the 8th Avenue frontage, inclusive of the two corners, whereby the attendees move towards the corners and up upon entering, as the passengers move towards the center and down, though preferably not so far down as in the following picture.
(The vertical configuration shown in the picture below may be the result of the MTA's stated preference for having the entire station on a single level save the tracks: which would actually create a greater tendency toward crowding by eliminating a lot of the floor space, as well as reducing potential for retail development. Their current architect's rendering of the area around the original Exit Concourse - which once allowed daylight to enter through circular glass elements embedded in the floor of the glassed-in Main Concourse above - appears designed to offend the eye, having too many columns within its cavernous expanse, and low ceilings, with lighting reminiscent of the Bus Terminal circa 1960. (see further below) The MTA has also emphatically stated a desire for high ceilings.)
Also, the arrangement in the picture below makes for the aesthetically pleasing presence of a big entrance centered opposite that of the grand old Post Office.
LOOKING WEST TOWARDS THE POST OFFICE
While this relatively recent interior rendering by HOK Architects captures more-or-less the idea of how to get unobstructed access for both passengers and MSG attendees, few of the more recent drawings - which began emerging as early as 2015 - seem to have concerned themselves much with issues of circulation within the arena/train station combine, which is largely all that matters. Most of the very numerous drawings made public from this period tend to be vague and conceptual, including a large body of drawings that included part of the station re-vamp already realized, produced under auspices of the Empire State Development Corporation - and clearly in a much more defined form concerning the part that got built than ever appeared before the public. These, along with certain others drawings, seem to have largely disappeared from the internet now, and it looks as if some interested parties have called on architects to retract their drawings based on copyright grounds, in order to achieve emphasis on one or another of the plans preferred or desired for promotion currently.
A large body of drawings in a stark and rather off-putting blue-grey-scale International Style, with large rectangular columns and no people around, followed a year or so after the Woods Bagot entry, and has now almost completely disappeared. Likewise, some of the drawings produced for ASTM - the Italian developer/contractor attempting to promote the version without the theater - have also disappeared, notably one engaging view showing a glass surround with permeable access all around a la Woods Bagot, which has been substituted in all public facing instances by a surprising, marble-clad Brutalist exterior produced by HOK. Finally, a more recent set of drawings, evidently produced for Governor Hochul shortly after the Empire State Development Corporation's chosen developer Vornado backed out, creates a very pleasing though fantastic view of what might be expected to develop, albeit with the physical impossibility of combining both the theater and the permeable glass surround in a single design. (see further below)
33RD STREET PASSAGE, BEFORE AND AFTER, AS ENVISIONED ABOUT 2015
(Click to enlarge)
The type of ceiling is recognizable to a lot of us as subject to random destruction. Luckily this one was too high up and public to be conveniently vandalized.
Possibly the only surviving example from the "grey-scale International" rash of drawings. The giant rectangular columns haven't yet been written in.
RENDERING THAT APPEARED ABOUT APRIL OF 2025
(Click to Enlarge)
The Suburban Basement treatment suggests the MTA sought an antidote to the two-level design that has obtained since 1910. The dimensional distortion is theirs.
The old 33rd Street Passage, deeply renovated and expanded in the '90s (above) appears cozy and warm versus the incomplete rendering of the International Style version (right) which is stark and dull-as-dishwater in person. The only thing interesting - besides the overwrought (and no doubt overpriced) Eureka Entrance and Stair - is the lighting in the area of the original LIRR Waiting Room: but a few of the lights always seem to be blacked out. The novelty of the original slanty ticket counter has been obviated by an improvised-looking window located at the back of a narrowly recessed alcove about midblock. In addition to the slanty ticket counter, the contrast between low and high ceilings in the old version was nicely played on, sort of seducing you to enter the lower part and visa-versa. The same effect could have been achieved at the Exit Concourse/33rd St. Passage low girders, which the MTA went to such extreme lengths to have removed. The arched ceiling is more attractive architecturally than the high one with its random rectilinear protrusions of the upper walls, despite the familiar sheet metal slats having come and left as scrap everywhere except Penn Station till now. The finish could later have been replaced with some more-expensive treatment in keeping more-or-less with the design parameters of the Late Great and Many-Arched Penn Station. The preserved Night-and-Day Clockface sculpture used to fit nicely at the end of the arch, though it's tasteless, and Old Father Time looks like a faggot. I hope someday the theme can be revisited, when we expand the station down to 30th Street and up to 34th!
Insistence on truncating the retail spaces under One Penn Plaza in order to make room for the wider passage has made at least one of the stores there comparatively small and uninviting versus how it was before, despite the high ceilings: if you knew Rose Pizza before the shutdown. Rather than "seducing you" the whole thing is visible from clear across the new and higher, wider passage. Rose had two stores in the passage before the shutdown, and will likely never again have anything like the seating capacity of just the one original store - though I'm certain the developers are knowledgeable about the kind of spaces their new tenants want. Only Rose Pizza and Walgreens came back, to the best of my knowledge, and clearly, several of the old tenants weren't pleased with the orders to vacate and wait around for three or four years - plus at least another two for the new tenants to finally move in: before that it was like a no man's land. In this respect, and from a commercial and financial standpoint, the whole operation has had no appreciable benefit. Quite the opposite.
While expanding the 33rd Street Passage into the space under One Penn Plaza was promoted as a way of addressing the crowding, the crowding was actually caused deliberately, by among other things, placing a big departure board (bigger than any before or since) opposite K-Mart, where people congregated with their food and open beers, extending generally into the middle of the passage on weekday afternoons, who sometimes found the intrusion of those trying to pass through so intolerable as to become openly hostile. The departure board and other means of obstruction were put in place to promote the East Side Access Project - though the urgency for trans-Hudson capacity after advent of the Kearny Connection was getting more and more extreme as the ARC Tunnel Project tanked and disbanded in 2010. (They were BEGGING Christie to get them out of it, because of a class action lawsuit with over 300 members in the class, whose retail and office properties were to be displaced.)
The giant new grey-black columns now take up more space than the previous early dinner crowd, dividing the passage unevenly in two. The jumble of unmatched and uneven slabs of granite posing as ashlar are the modern-day substitute for terrazzo, as the subfloor needn't be even in order to support them. The slabs sag and bulge in plainly visible and extreme instances which would be embarrassing to most, but for those who brought us to this pass there is no such thing as embarrassment.
UNINSPIRED BREUER-INSPIRED BRUTALIST
Not that I don't like Breuer, but it looks like a small-town library from the '60s that's already been torn down. It's center-centricity also defeats the purpose of the multi-permeable glass surround... along with the nearest appearing large-finned respite of serene quietude - fuhgeddabbowdit
THE ISSUE OF THE MSG LOADING DOCKS
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Empire State Development, with loading docks. This more recent version toned down and pedestrian as possible. FX Collaborative WSP John McAslan & Partners
Whereas Empire State Development et al didn't seem much interested in addressing the issue of loading docks. ASTM consulted with MSG about it.
THE BLIND WALL MOVES INDOORS, BECOMING TRANSPARENT IN THE PROCESS
Looks like a Symphony Concert. Assuming the glass surround is located a bare minimum of 20 feet from the blind wall - although it looks like 75 as viewed on the sides - the surround and its columns (which support the roof) would be based in the travel lanes of 8th Avenue. Perhaps we're looking at a potential enclosed taxi stand here, but I don't know about building columns in 8th Avenue. The Guastavino-vaulted taxi stand at Grand Central has been repurposed as a latrine. This drawing simply leaves out any provision for vertical movement. Courtesy of FX Collaborative WSP John McAslan + Partners
A RECENT RENDERING OF THE 33RD STREET CORNER ENTRANCE
If anything, the architect is trying to say that the theater's got to go. In an effort to make it more spacious the 33rd Street entrance is run out over the corner plaza. (further than would be possible if they hadn't distorted the perspective) But they still intend to keep the narrow provisions for vertical movement necessitated by the theater, as shown here within the extended entrance as a hole in the wall. This is one of the most embarrassing drawings of the whole lot, but the previous version, now unavailable, was worse. Both have the perspective distorted for forward emphasis, and it's clear the issues of blind corners and potential hangouts were not considered. It all amounts to the architects telling the MTA to get a life and get rid of the theater!
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PUBLIC COMMENT ON PENN STATION REDEVELOPMENT - July 7, 2023
Revised 5/13/25
To: the MTA Board
Re: Penn Station, and Amtrak's Effects on MTA Project Planning
Amtrak, though not precisely a freight carrier, is in many ways a part the Freight Carrier Railroad Engineering FRA Revolving Door Cabal, as they, like the Class 1 Railroads, are descended from the same, often deliberately failed railroad companies. The Pennsylvania Railroad was the pioneer at the forefront of the deliberate-fail mode of doing business, sloughing off their US Mail contracts to the burgeoning air freight industry, and instating propaganda kinks on the Northeast Corridor just in time for arrival of the benighted Metroliners, which were noisy and rough anyway. Not surprisingly, Amtrak patterned over a thousand new cars of their first two fleets after the Metroliner design.
As soon as the Pennsylvania got control of the New York Central they began running it into the ground, and Albany Union Station was dismembered from their right-of-way within ten months of the merger. Now, rather than a 10-minute walk to the Capitol, all the politicos were practically forced to give up their parlor car seats and find some other means of conveyance. The last president of the Central was inclined to have none of what he knew was coming, and left the Penn Central behind to go and restore the dying Western Pacific Railroad to long-term solvency. (Not the Western Pacific of the original 1869 trans-con, but a newer line designed to operate in direct competition with it, between Salt Lake and Sacramento.)
Amtrak doesn't have a good record with train stations. They and a few of their immediate predecessors have ruined or irreversibly crippled a great many of our finest stations, e.g. Grand Central: When Amtrak moved out, they sacrificed the quickest routes to several important points north and west including the state capitol. And no sooner did the MTA get control of it than they sold off the air rights to the interests of the adjacent super-scraper (one of two we understand) serving to belittle the iconic station into nothingness. (This was not true of the Pan Am Building, but only the undertakings permitted or likely to be through the MTA's takeover of the station. Pan Am actually benefitted the station.) And THERE IS NO CAPACITY PROBLEM AT GCT: the capacity problem is - or occurred in - Mott Haven. Thus the train station with the highest train capacity ever achieved - in both hemispheres - was deliberately disabled and deprecated shortly after the PRR - inventor of propaganda kinks - took over. Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo-Central, Michigan-Central, St. Louis (together with Washington D.C. our second-or-third-greatest station still surviving - BUT IT'S BLOCKED) Cincinnati, Columbus, Springfield, Dayton, Kansas City, Joplin, Birmingham, TWO in Milwaukee, Madison by Frank Lloyd Wright, Minneapolis, South Bend, Tacoma, and 3rd & Townsend in San Francisco to name a few - all wrecked during my lifetime, most precipitated by Amtrak's exit.
In the case of Washington Union Station (WUS, to use the nomenclature of the interests in charge) Amtrak has been engaged in planning of an inexplicably misnamed endeavor called the Washington Union Station "Expansion" Project (my quotes) for the past twelve years. The longstanding most-successful and lucrative mall property in the world now lays abjectly prostrate owning to fallout from the bankruptcy-with-fraud-accusations of a developer chosen by Amtrak and another quasi-government entity to lead the project. In the current gigantic and misguided, yet highly ambitious and expensive project, they intend to reduce the number of platform tracks from 33 to 19, while at the same time shortening the tracks still further - after a lesser truncation prior to mid-century - by about 250 feet, making them about 250 feet farther from the curb than they already are. This following a similar inconvenience already achieved in the 1980s, by chopping off 62.5 feet from either end of the Concourse, supposedly protected under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The area of the truncated concourse ends has since been boxed in by a building - the Securities and Exhange Commission - occupying one of their footprints. ...which has happened to tracks and right-of-way at many important stations (See Jamaica Station in Queens) and is likely to happen to the station in Washington if those in our misplaced trust succeed in getting the planned development built on top of the station, turning the passenger interface into a permanent, low-capacity intractable mess. It is puzzling how those supposed to steward our passenger rail properties have been rapidly bringing them to destruction. For a long time the concourse ends could easily have been restored, along with the convenience and ease of quick access they once provided. The station was designed with much foresight to have two possible 1750' platform tracks on the west, and two through-tracks opposite 1500' platforms on the east. There is in the current plans a great deal of painstaking design work that would nonetheless result in no appreciable benefit - some of which appears as conspiracy to outright fraud - and too much else wrong with it to describe here.
But that's why I'm telling you: the only reason Amtrak (and probably your advisors) want Madison Square Garden removed from Penn Station is to allow a tabula rasa rearrangement of the columns at track level SO THEY CAN LAY IT PERMANENTLY LAME. Just as the only reason Vornado wanted to build yet another chimney-shaped super-scraper at 33rd & 7th was to get rid of the hotel. It was a multi-decades ambition of that company to demolish the hotel, an important part of America's musical life and history. Tell me that any hotel of such dimensions and room configuration wouldn't be a goldmine if properly looked after at that location opposite Penn Station. You don't see streets with 30-story buildings as far as the eye can see, anywhere else, ever. (You'd think the Municipal Arts Society or someone would take note of that and publicize it.) They somehow kept the Wikipedia article minimized - and the hotel off the National Register - till their opponents were thoroughly worn down - then reneged on the entire project - at which point the Wikipedia article blossomed with all kinds of new historical info (having been closely managed prior in order to prevent it) and then suddenly, demolition was under way.
Those secant piles of "the Box" did cost a lot, whereas the tunnel easement that remained under 31st Street for at least 105 years - before you sold it off in 2015 - would allow the best possible route to provide for an immediate increased in train capacity, and future expansion of the station, for a fraction of the cost. It would also allow a four-track Amtrak station on a lower level beneath 31st Street, with long, wide platforms, and a future connection to the final East River tunnel - without tearing down the Stewart Hotel, and without property acquisition anywhere south of the 31st Street building line, that is to say, virtually none. (...though the Amtrak station would be wider and better if the buildings fronting on 30th Street, which you already plan to remove, were taken. With 30th Street closed opposite the post office, provision for natural light would be possible on a very large scale, with the possibility of achieving a stunning addition capable of boarding sixteen-car trains quickly. The rest of the block to the south would be required in order to build any station expansion having sufficient capacity to be worth the trouble - unlike the current proposal - and it can be done in a way the pleases everyone involved, provided the property and planning is stewarded so as to avoid conflicts. That would provide about twelve more tracks, with tri-level elevators for storing/servicing the trains, and 30' platforms for NJ Transit passengers. An additional local stop on the 7th Avenue Subway, at a somewhat lower level than the 34th Street station, could be made to provide direct endlong access to the platforms.)
At least the four existing station tracks 1-through-4 would be afforded eastbound service for the first time, through a 31st Street East River Tunnel - AS ORIGINALLY FORESEEN - but not without rectifying the mess you've created at Sunnyside in conjunction with the East Side Access Project. It was SO CLEAR that the speedy eight-track line through Sunnyside was to have four tracks running onto the four-track Hell Gate Bridge (..as against the existing two-track configuration, which saved having to keep up miles and miles of trackage that wasn't needed at the time.) yet you nixed that plan, conceived in the first part of the last century, and decided to concentrate instead on three expensive "tunnels" having radically limited speed, and steep grades imposed by the presence too many bridge-crossings existing along the line to allow any tunnel to make it to the top at an acceptable grade. BUT YOU BUILT THEM ANYWAY. The correct alternative for Amtrak trains emerging from the south tube would be a standard concrete box bridge carrying two tracks on each level (Not box beams, a railroad bridge like the 115-year-old ones at Harald Interlocking) allowing the two eastbound tracks of Amtrak to pass over the two Long Island Railroad tracks within a matter of about 850 linear feet, Thus:
Tracks are shown propagating from the four East River Tunnels on the left, to an eight-track 'highway' - the 'Sunnyside Speedway' - on the right. The four inbound tracks on the top are unchanged from their 1910 configuration. By means of an Approximately 850' bridge, Amtrack's two outbound tracks are maneuvered toward the center as they propagate, in order to connect with the Hell Gate line off to the right. Both directions of travel here have been plagued by sometimes-scary propaganda kinks for 10 years that I know of. Low speed is generally still required. There have been an excessive number of changes in keeping with the dithering MO, and that's how the three idiotic tunnels, running amidst the old tracks as they pass through numerous bridge crossings, came to be.
Without some arrangement like the one shown above there can be no further East River Tunnel from Penn Station: because there's no way to effectively connect it to the tracks at Sunnyside so as to afford any reasonable amount of capacity and speed. And don't think for an instant that the "NEC Future" alignment found in their "Representative Route Preferred Alternative" file, is anything but good evidence of a poor job by the NEC Future Flunkies. I am in possession of same in several off-line iterations.
The two middle tubes cross over before emerging in Queens. With most LIRR trains entering the eastbound tunnel at 33rd Street in Manhattan, which crosses under the westbound express tunnel as shown in Queens, in order to reach the eastbound side of the 'Sunnyside Speedway'. Entering the eastbound tube at 32nd Street in Manhattan - as most eastbound Amtrak trains do - will put you on the southmost track in Queens. Thus the Amtrak trains must cross over the LIRR tracks in order to be aligned with the four center tracks running on/off the Hell Gate Bridge. This crossing has always been done at grade heretofore, and due to the hectic scheduling of both railroads this can be dicey. But in 1910 there was no need for the bridge in the smaller picture above.
Past the tunnel, the radii of the outbound tracks are all quite broad, and that of the westbound express tracks still broader. I remember coming home at night from the World's Fair and flying by the animated Swingline Stapler sign at speed. It's on a slight downgrade and it was all 39' lengths, but smoother than anything there now.
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East Side Access has already taken us the extreme of corrupt planning that still permits making lemonade; the steps being taken now, including the Gateway Project/Hudson Tunnel, will take up to a point where it will impossible
There is no way to increase train capacity at Penn Station inside the existing footprint other than the existing brilliantly designed configuration of 1910. Given that the idiotic "Box" is aligned too high and laterally skewed as against the station, it can't afford much relief in the form of additional capacity, and given that the ground stabilization ends at the navigation channel - and that the tunnel is abnormally high there too - I'm surprised there's no mention anywhere of tide ebbs and flows near or against the new tunnel located in "clayey, sandy, silty mud". Estuarial tides are notoriously fast and powerful at the bottom. You have profuse leaking where the old south tube passes from Jersey bedrock into the muddy bottom of the river at a much lower elevation, but that predictable movement is caused by the passage at 60mph of heavy locomotives and trains. The combination of clayey, sandy, silty mud with deep river currents, and a manifoldly misplaced passenger tunnel, is not so predictable. (For more on this see: Hudson Tunnel vs. The Correct Alternative)
Amtrak must concentrate on directing passengers to their numbered cars, rather than alterations to the system of tracks that already affords the greatest capacity possible within the existing footprint. (The subway will need the same kind controls soon.) The platforms at Penn Station in certain instances have been altered most unflatteringly, to accommodate curves that didn't exist in the original plan or construction, which should be removed. There should be a law against that kind of intended manipulation. Commuters know how to get to their trains, it's only people unfamiliar with the station who need guidance; and if Amtrak is smart they'll put it in writing for every Amtrak passenger who buys a ticket to/from Penn Station - in addition to any needed directions within the station. There are already plenty of train personnel at the platforms in advance of Amtrak departures.
Progress has been made towards building enough stairs and conveyances to reach the platforms, although capacity will be limited as the number of levels within the station, and therefore the floor space, are diminished. The original two levels, save the tracks, should be retained, and if you want to relieve crowding, it would help if you'd remove the snotty Ticketed Passengers Area from the middle of the concourse. Train stations are for everyone, and there are proven ways for to maintain order. Police in NY had, till recently, been trained to do that kind of work, which could also be expected to benefit those who get removed within reason. The station is public property not subject to the whims of the City Council. (Personally I don't like 1st Class Lounges in train stations. Think how much better it would be if you could choose from a large number of private businesses in stations that would provide some Service and Ambience, or ease for dealing with kids, rather than yesterday's fruit bruised from stacking, and an automatic coffee maker at public expense. That dining cars with captive patrons attending several seatings with liquor by the drink and wine by the bottle can't make money is a falsehood from the now-freight-carrier-only entities that people still believe.)
Vacant space somewhat analogous to the Ticketed Passenger Area already exists on the lower level in spades, and has been penetrated to a lesser degree than would result from removing Ticketed Passengers Area above. (...which is necessary also to provide sight lines on the upper level that aren't confusing.) The picture above, that looks like the Bus Terminal c. 1960, shows that opening the disused space of the 33rd Street Passage level has at least been contemplated. An earlier program to use some of the space, the LIRR Central Concourse, seems to have taken out an important stair that gave access from the empty ellipsoidal room above - where the so-called Great Room used to be - to the 33rd Street Passage. Assuming this LIRR Central Concourse could be expanded to the south, an analogous stair at the opposite end of the former Great Room would lend some much needed logic and ease of wayfinding, assuming the two stairs could be made visible one-to-the-other across the station by some means. Likely the Concourse would have to widen out where it meets the 33rd Street Passage, and likewise at the other end, to make the stairs visible from across the station. Another set of platform stairs and conveyances could then be made to extend from the upper level, straddling those of the LIRR Central Concourse. The ellipsoidal space directly over the Central Concourse, called the Main Waiting Room in the original plan (there were no seats) might then serve as a waiting area, with seating to either side of the main walkway extending from the stair and escalator much as they already are, but without blocking the one new and one revived stairs at the sides. Without the Ticketed Passenger Waiting Area the space betwee
It really won't do to have amenities such as big stairs hidden and unmarked behind labyrinthine visual obstructions, as has occurred over the years in jumbled wise since the old station building was removed, in addition to the already mentioned stair that was removed completely. Stairs at opposite ends of the formerly glassed-in area of the concourse would also contribute to the ability of strangers to orient themselves, especially if they can be made visible one-to-another across the room's nearly-two-block expanse, as they were in the original 1910 design, in both the glass Concourse and the Great Room. This would require a considerable amount of construction work to alter the existing configuration from the results of changes made since demolition of the old station building, when three of the four mentioned big stairs were removed - in addition to that already undertaken at huge expense to add a few feet to the width of the 33rd Street Passage.
While I'm glad to see Vornado has found some tenants for 33rd Street I don't see how it is they deserve to stay involved in any further agreements concerning the station. And now, ten years into this thing, the head of C&D has said to my face that THE MTA DOESN'T EVEN POSSESS WORKING DRAWINGS so they can at least negotiate effectively with MSG. It was Woods Bagot who produced the brilliant design in 2014: TO GET RID OF THE BLIND WALL. (that's approx. 80' tall by 400' wide - it stinks) and the Governor's new drawings - a no-doubt quickly produced act of desperation - strangely takes after the same Woods Bagot proposal, to the point where they show a physical impossibility, of having the nearly identical glass "surround" extend down 8th Avenue IN FRONT OF the said blind wall, where there's simply no room for it, or any entrance either.
Needless to say, I think you should be negotiating with ASTM (but skip the regressive Brutalist version of marble by HOK, in favor of the less expensive glass surround.) ASTM will be incentivized to get the best results, including maintaining the property in top condition. Know that ONLY THE DOLANS (certainly not Paramount Pictures) were capable of making that theater work post-Felt Forum. It involved some dicey physical prestidigitation to suspend the giant balcony (not unlike the private boxes of MSG) which extends around to the sides and serves to block the corner entrances to the station as well. Janno must be joking: the new drawing of the corner entrance with it's distorted perspective, again - is just as horrible - comically so - as the old one.
Of course I don't know how your existing contracts and relations with ASTM are going, but all things considered, believe that ASTM - and replacing the blind wall with an iconic entrance opposite the Post Office (which after all, DOES have quite an entrance in its own right) is your best bet. Other than that, you're right about expanding the subway entrance on the lower level at 33rd & 8th - it's long overdue - and congrats on the 'soffit foil' over the big stair from the uptown local platform, with the inscription "Long Island Rail Road[sic.]" - since the stair beetles most frighteningly over the area below otherwise, with it's magnificent granite ashlar... bumpy stone slabs don't match...
You're right about making the platforms "permeable" as much as possible - and that's been partially accomplished over the years through a sense of grinding necessity. But it isn't as though the manifold blockage of passenger circulation wasn't deliberately imposed: in order to promote East Side Access over the much more pressing need for a new trans-Hudson tunnel, and more platform tracks in Manhattan to serve it. At the time that 'Access to the Region's Core' was being conceived, the MTA was fee-simple OWNER of the Coliseum site, where the future Time-Warner Building would eventually rise. The OBVIOUS solution would have been to build a not-terribly-deep station there, roughly analogous to the current Whole Foods space, passing under Central Park, with a grade-separated connection to the Park Avenue Line running south. In fact I have it roughly drawn out - taking the route of least resistance in terms of real estate between 5th and Park Avenues, which would have been far less resistant then, with developers always willing to substitute the few nondescript pre-and-post-war buildings needed, to be sacrificed for more soaring skyscrapers.
BUT NONE OF THAT WAS INCLUDED IN ANY OF THE EXTENSIVE AND EXPENSIVE EIS DOCUMENTS PRODUCED IN RE. THE 1995-2010 ACCESS TO THE REGION'S CORE FIASCO - including the ludicrous deep-Hudson at-grade interlocking, to enable a spur to Penn Station with a 5% grade, involving a giant cofferdam. (Imagine traffic from both 34th Street and Penn Station converging under there. What Idiocy! HOW MUCH FOR THAT?)
As for the troublesome obstruction-with-an-agenda at Penn Station, there was also the Arrivals/Departures Board opposite the entrance to K-Mart, where nasty passengers always gathered with open containers and open chewing mouths, threatening some kind of food fight if you tried to so much as walk through (and not MSG passengers either) ...where the big stair from the former Great Room used to be: speaking of permeability... and finally, The SNOTTY Private Waiting Room - smack in the central walkway/concourse:
Train stations are public places: they belong to everyone. But it's necessary to maintain order - and the police, just regular police (I doubt much effectiveness of long guns for the purpose) are better trained, highly experienced, and more capable than anyone ever has been at dealing with the kind of problems experienced with train stations. So if you have some NGO demanding loudly that soup lines and improvised shower facilities be placed, along with emergency sleeping accommodations, at various locations of their choosing within the station, then I'd say sue them - and instead, place a nice big and iconic well-lit waiting room "in with the general population." It's just as easy to police that way as with the contrived walls and barriers taking up space - with staffed and guarded ticket-counter checkpoints employing lethal force. There's no need to make further experiments in snotty juxtoppositions any more at Penn Station. The MTA (unlike Amtrak apparently) has always shown a good deal of realistic practical thinking in this regard, and at the height of what is hopefully now a waning degree of utter ridiculousness concerning this subject, Sarah Feinberg was heavily traduced for her actions regarding hiring police, which it is now clear have stood us in good stead.
In conclusion, you should rightly be thankful for the 'captive audience' of MSG. They, more than any other discernible entity, feed the business in the station on which reliable MTA revenue depends. AND WHAT PORTION OF MTA AND NJ TRANSIT RIDERSHIP IS DIRECTLY POWERED BY MADISON SQUARE GARDEN? It's not something to be trifled with, as you are currently doing.
Best Regards, Bruce Hain
WASHINGTON UNION STATION
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.If you had shown up at Washington Union Station in 1974 the above is what you would have seen. Intended as a small, below-grade theater to serve standing viewers of an audio-visual presentation about the Bicentennial, "the Pit" as it was locally known, never drew much attention, and closed shortly after it's July 4, 1976 debut. Shortly after the theater closed the station went into lockdown, after passengers complained of debris from the water damaged ceiling falling on their heads, and for the next 12 years passengers were required to follow confusing signage from the front of the station by way of some circuitous distance in order to reach Amtrak's new "Amshack" somewhere in back.
The grander attributes of Union Station remained disused and deteriorating till well after 1981, when President Reagan requested congressional concensus to undertake a major restoration, which resulted in legislation of the Union Station Redevelopment Act of 1981. In 1983 the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation was formed by the USDOT to enact the 1981 legislation, and requests were put out for private developers to undertake the improvements, which ultimately resulted in a revival beyond anyone's dreams, and the most lucrative and iconic indoor mall property ever, for 30 years running.
More recently though, things have fallen to pieces as the COVID epidemic took it's toll on businesses within the station, who broke their leases or parted amicably with the most recent developer to actually have a going concern at the station, whereupon the Development Corporation proprietors selected another developer to lease a hugely expanded property in accord with the current "Washington Union Station Expansion Project" - who promptly went bankrupt. And the mall property stands empty in the middle of Union Station.
So this is the stage we find ourselves at, with a mall property second to none (at least in the US) and some hugely expensive and overwrought plans to gut the station, which involve moving the tracks another 250 feet back from the curb than they already are - after being shortened earlier, pre-mid-century - and demolishing the existing mall property, with it's soaring flights of floating stairs and commodious balconies all clad in the finest marble ashlar that money could buy, showing no signs of wear whatsoever.
THE MARBLE APPOINTMENTS ARE CAMERA SHY
OUT-OF-THE-WAY STAIR FROM LOWER LEVEL
ON THE UPPER WALKWAY
TOP OF SAME STAIR
CURVED BALCONY
TWO CURVED FLOATING STAIRS FROM BEHIND
(view from front, as from Waiting Room, can't be found)
If they want a configuration that seduces visitors and passengers through to the concourse/mall and onto the platforms - as I believe has always been an intended quality of the station's layout - they should remove the obstructions, such as the Amtrak Ticket Counter, which is the superlative centerpiece of obstructions running most of the length of the concourse. Once past those obstructions it's like you had your Drawing Room downgraded to Amfleet I - as you enter the D.C. netherworld of "Amshack at Scale".
AMSHACK AT SCALE
Thanks to Sal Amadeo for the six preceding interior shots.
They'd be able to save a lot of money by just keeping all the marble and floating stairs, and perhaps building a set of platform gates that somehow take after the black metal banisters with solid mahogany railing, rather than demolishing them. Because they're not likely to stumble on anything more redolent of luxury and high style, set before the public inclusively, as the original mall conversion by architect Benjamin C. Thompson.
SOME DISTURBING MODIFICATIONS
Although the station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act in 1969, a few things inexplicably got by in the 1980s that should never have happened. The most disturbing of these was the shortening of the concourse, which not only spoils the massing of the building, but makes it less convenient for passengers approaching on foot from directions both facing and peripheral to the station. Prior to the 1980s revamp the concourse protruded about 62.5 feet on either side beyond the more massive main structure of the station.
"The New Union Station" circa 1907 shows the concourse at right, with its three giant entrance portals, extending beyond the main station building. No statuary, no fountain.
WEST SIDE OF CONCOURSE ABOUT 30 YEARS APART
(click to enlarge)
Three giant portals are shortened by filling in the tops, with roll gates closed midday.
At L. is world's ugliest pedestrian bridge to the P.O. to supplement
the mail tunnel?
Full effect of concourse chopping, overseen by the ludicrous stilted parking garage, here significantly toned-down as against the original weirdness.
PARKING GARAGE MOTIVIC WEIRDNESS
As it turns out the so-called Union Station Expansion Project succeeds in advocating for expansion of everything except the train station, which in fact is to be curtailed: with it's platform tracks reduced to five sixths their original length, and their number reduced by more than one third of the original 33 - while being boxed in on every side including above and below so that no further changes can be made. This is to benefit peripheral needs such as a bus terminal, expanded parking, and high-rise real estate development, where there appears no real exigency that any of these be considered. While for 15 years after the 1988 reopening there remained ample space for a separate bus terminal and parking facilities, planners have delayed until all this now-choice property was gobbled up, largely through selling off former railroad property. Washington Union Station is not a suburban commuter stop; special provisions for public parking are not a priority, and are in fact rare in center-city train stations. The attempt to squeeze in expansion of the already misplaced bus terminal, plus parking, creates an insoluble demand for space that simply doesn't exist. These so-called professional planners have been going at this project in this wise since 2012, and yet not one of them has seen fit to say anything about it. They and their inept quasi-federal corporation-in-charge should be publicly sanctioned for these actions and removed from the project.
PUBLIC COMMENT ON UNION STATION SUPPLEMENTAL DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT 6/6/23
Here follows my comment on the Expansion Project, which actually entails significant contraction and curtailment. If you're going from 33 tracks down to 19, while shortening the platform length significantly owing to some unexplained exigency of building a SECOND main concourse completely at odds with the existing architecture, then you're climbing the rails. I'm not opposed to contrasting contemporary style with tradition: it has been the most successful means to expand and modify properties that need it, when undertaken in a sober way, but the "Train Hall" is dimensionally gargantuan viewed against the original concourse, and screams it's belittlement through its indulgence in thematic material possibly otherwise graceful, but in this case insulting to the original: everything is Bigger, Better, Airier, with so much more light, glass and breathing room! A better option, if you want a few wider platforms, is to take away some of the single tracks, and go from 33 down to 30, not 19. The longest platforms were intended to allow two 1750' trains, and two 1500' ones on the through tracks. That should be preserved, and the two sharp curves on the through track platforms removed. They are some kind of appeal for more money to waste, but were not included in the original design. The original drawing shows gentle curves such that raised platforms would be compatible with 85' cars - and not with 15" of space in between.
True, the existing concourse has not aged well, but it's operating with a handicap, as some of the geniuses who worked on the last revamp seem to have found the concourse undesirable. Why else would they chop off the ends?
Clearly, if preservation law means anything at all the first priority in this re-do is to at least start down a clear path of getting the original concourse right. That means the FRA begins negotiating with with the SEC, because their very grand entrance has been standing in the way since 2002. The concourse needs to be extended about 62.5' on each side - up to the walls with the globular lamps on top, and the FRA had an empty space there for at least a decade after the Reagan Administration improvements were completed. It was only a level parking lot, yet they never reconsidered, never thought to secure the necessary property needed to ensure the viability of their own building, supposedly protected under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. And it is a 'pattern' with this cabal since about 1945: selling off the main line and pleading poverty all the way, while paying exorbitant "dividends" as the system of transportation goes to hell. It's an issue of the environment, of living standards and of national defense, and there are laws in place that enjoin it.
It was the railroads in their deprecated state leading to collapse that decided passengers were no longer wanted or needed, or the lucrative government contracts - which they refused - to carry the mail, leaving air transport as the only option for mail and package express. What Percent of US Mail goes by Air? It's now certain the Harley Post Office opposite Penn Station in Manhattan, with it's giant pneumatic tubes running all over Manhattan, will never be used to move the mail again, and the same applies to the "National Postal Museum" - because the railroads and their spiritual heirs, Amtrak and the FRA, want it that way. The Pennsylvania Railroad was the head of this cabal, once the richest railroad in the world; the NY Central was as an innocent victim, but they soon learned. It was the PRR that introduced propaganda kinks on the Northeast Corridor, just in time for the Metroliner's benighted debut. The tactic (rather inexplicable on its face) lives on in the New York City Subway and Long Island Railroad, which carry the highest passenger volume in the country. What I call the Freight Carrier Railroad Engineering FRA Revolving Door Cabal tends to use this tactic for leverage when they want state transit boards to start forking out for make-work "improvements" such as the one currently under discussion - which often castrate rather than alleviate bottlenecks and capacity constraints, serving often to get them etched in stone and steel of practical permanence. These people have no business selling property rights to anyone, never mind self-interested developers who will grab every chance they can get to work an advantage. Frankly, I think they owe their prospective partners (if any) an apology, and maybe some compensation.
Any re-do of Washington Union station must be constrained within reasonable monetary and spacial dimensions; it cannot be used as a springboard to catapult an exorbitant rent roll, especially if every time there's a business reversal, or a virus, the transit-critical house catches on fire. Where once this station had the finest indoor mall property in the world, by revenue and every other measure - and by far - it all cascaded in the space of a few months. How much worse will it be, if the mall property is expanded twofold? Is that not what Amtrak and their non-existent developers have in mind?
As a practical matter, this expansion - which actually entails diminution of the rail infrastructure's usefulness and versatility, and thereby its fitness for the future - must be curtailed. Because: The only reason Amtrak and the FRA want so much development on top is to lock in their destructive modifications at track level, so that (again) they are etched in stone and steel of practical permanence. The three commodious entrance portals at either side, on the front of the concourse, were designed to allow quick access to the platforms for dashing commuters wanting to bypass an extended trek through the crowded station. They were designed as a boon to passengers arriving on foot, and for both environmental and aesthetic reasons the Concourse must be restored. I'm not sure about Chicago windows all the way around at either end, but they might look nice with a long banquette continuing past the corners. I'm sure a very beautiful and up-to-date treatment for the ends can be had, perhaps with more glass to set off the clocks if it should be decided to retain them. (Oh! It was already decided to trash them.)
But what happened at the waiting room/concourse roof interface? Someone determined that the need for more glorious airborne light was so severe they needed to truncate the giant arch lunettes of the waiting room in order to achieve it? So the lunettes on the front of the building extend lower than the ones up against the ineptly modified roof of the concourse - as a sort of snoot cock to Burnham I suppose. Obviously, the symmetry of the Waiting Room's upper windows must be restored, now.
I find it very improbable that the side entrances at H Street will attract many passengers or visitors, as the SDEIS so insistently advocates. Who wouldn't just approach from the front and walk down the platform if they had the choice? Also, something very desirable of avoidance would be more big subterranean halls of lengthy proportions, as the board of the NY MTA has so bitterly insisted on, while denigrating the very pleasant modifications made at Penn Station in the '90s incessantly... with crummy results, and no tenants, at about two billion dollars so far, and with no appreciable benefit.
Certainly H-Street is a eyesore, and it should run UNDER the tracks. But Pergamente has already made Herculean efforts to beautify the inconvenient interface of their new building. So get your "basics" - exigencies - worked out first, and don't lie in the papers that you can produce an even moderately pleasant set of side entrances there without rebuilding the bridge. The grade is too steep. The bridge is a relic. Get rid of it. Bury it. THEN set about making your plans for investing in development and developers.
And I'm telling you: the only reason they want Madison Square Garden moved off of Penn Stations is to create a tabula rasa rearranging of the columns at track level, SO THEY CAN LAY IT PERMANENTLY LAME - then develop the property over it so it's absolutely permanent. The same thing applies at Washington: Amtrak doesn't have a good record with historic train stations. They, or their direct predecessors - the Freight Carrier Railroad Engineering FRA Revolving Door Cabal - have trashed a huge number of strategically located train stations, designed by the brightest engineers and architects of their age to serve the public in sometimes stunning and luxurious settings of great architectural diversity and often great beauty, intended to last for a couple hundred years at least.
Amtrak has shown, through many of their actions, that They prefer "AmShack" - regardless of any inconvenience to the public, or practical inefficiencies including slow, circuitous configurations, that their preferred station sites often entail. See: Penn, Grand Central, Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo Central, Michigan Central, St. Louis (probably tied with Washington as our second-greatest station still standing, But It's Blocked) Cincinnati, Kansas City (both subject to similar intractable truncations) Columbus, Springfield, Dayton, Joplin, Louisville, Nashville, Birmingham, Montgomery, TWO in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Madison by Frank Lloyd Wright, South Bend, Phoenix, "T&P Lofts" (Fort Worth) Dallas Union, Tacoma, and 3rd &Townsend in San Francisco to name an incomplete list.
Please! Don't let them do that again.
Very Truly Yours,
Bruce W. Hain June 6, 2023
Queens, New York
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