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  • Machine, Monument, and Metropolis: New York’s Pennsylvania StationAt the Hagley Museum and Library
  • Albert J. Churella (bio)

New York's Pennsylvania Station constituted one of the great architectural and engineering milestones of the twentieth century; its destruction was an irreparable loss, albeit one that gave momentum to the emerging historic preservation movement. Machine, Monument, and Metropolis: New York's Pennsylvania Station, appearing at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, from October 2003 to January 2005, echoes Penn Station's grandeur while rewarding the studious visitor with an appreciation for the station's broader technological, political, and social significance.

Unlike the New York Central, with its water-level route into the heart of Manhattan, the Pennsylvania Railroad stopped on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, obliging passengers to transfer to ferries for the remainder of their journey. The PRR's president, Alexander J. Cassatt, whose penchant for grandiose engineering projects led to the quadruple-tracking of the railroad's main line between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, gave his assent to the construction of an all-rail "Manhattan Gateway" into the heart of New York City. The project, announced in 1901 and completed in 1910, included a new rail line across the New Jersey Meadows, tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers, a coach yard for PRR and Long Island Railroad commuter trains at Sunnyside in Queens, the Hell Gate Bridge over the East River (a massive project in its own right, and one that was not completed until 1917), and, of course, Penn Station itself. That the project was a technological [End Page 817] marvel is beyond dispute; less clear is whether there was any convincing economic justification for this hundred-million-dollar expenditure. Though far more than a mere publicity stunt, the station embodied managerial efforts to convince the public that railroads were modern, progressive, and hardly in need of additional government regulation.


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Figure 1.

Visitors admire the intricately detailed HO-scale model of Penn Station, circa 1929. (All photos courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.)

Visitors approach the exhibit in a nostalgic frame of mind, as the hallway leading to the single gallery is lined with advertising posters from the golden age of postwar rail travel. They enter the exhibit gallery through a set of reproduction Penn Station platform gates, an electric eye triggering departure announcements for crack streamliners. Once inside, they can scarcely miss an enormous (approximately seven feet by thirty feet) HO-scale (1:87) model of the station (fig. 1). Amateur PRR enthusiasts and modelers devoted countless hours of research and craftsmanship to this model. Throngs of commuters, travelers, and railroad workers buy tickets, board trains, hail cabs, and surge through the cavernous, vaulted galleries. Automatically controlled Long Island Railroad commuter trains and long-distance PRR limiteds arrive and depart from the station's underground platforms. Miniature reproductions of the murals in the general waiting room attest to the artistry of the station's construction and to the vast reach of the Pennsylvania Railroad network. Cutaways allow visitors to see the complexity of the substreet support columns and the distinctive steel arches and skylights over the concourse (fig. 2). Greatly simplified models of the adjoining Post Office Building and Hotel Pennsylvania reinforce the imposing size of the station and show how railroads transported the mail and provided first-class hotel accommodations for travelers. In an age [End Page 818] when fewer and fewer people have clear recollections of the actual Penn Station, this impressive model goes a long way toward evoking the majesty and complexity of a now vanished architectural treasure.


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Figure 2.

Penn Station's Seventh Avenue and Thirty-Third Street façade reflected president Alexander Cassatt's vision for a grand public space and concealed vice president Samuel Rea's efficient underground transportation machine.

It is perhaps appropriate that this one display dominates the entire exhibit. After all, contemporary accounts and nostalgic remembrances have often lavished attention and praise on Penn Station itself, while largely ignoring the technological, political, and social forces that made that building possible. Fortunately, the Hagley staff has augmented the...

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