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brianvan t1_ixdtrvq wrote

As noted in the link, they let the place fall apart before they actually tore it down.

Most of the pictures people pass around are from the first 10 years… or even, the first days… of operation. While the place did become a predictably grimy and crumbly mess from lack of detailed upkeep (building such a massive structure with that kind of stone & exposing it to a barrage of human-generated pollution), it should also be noted that its late 50s iteration had become just as commerce-cluttered as what’s there today.

Additionally, it was unpleasantly vast and poorly designed. Which I say because… the concourses have the same general floorplan today, and people hate it. They didn’t actually change the train station part a whole lot. They just took the headhouse off the top of it. A lot of what people don’t like about Penn today came with the first version of the station.

It was a tragedy that they dismantled it. It was also a tragedy it’d gotten into bad shape already, a tragedy they built something that was in bad shape after just 50 years, and possibly a tragedy if they’d kept it and not improved it substantially.

Lol 2 Penn and MSG are not improvements at all, of course. And nothing the Pennsylvania Railroad did at the site changed the eventual outcome that Pennsy and 5 other major Northeast passenger/freight railroad companies crashed hard, couldn’t get out of bankruptcy, and had to be nationalized to become Amtrak and Conrail. (And Conrail’s successors are profitable, but a pain point in establishing better Amtrak service) And no one in government at the time could be trusted to build anything better, Robert Moses would have had a highway going through the site if he were allowed to build it. So it all just sucks.

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joyousRock t1_ixe9ag4 wrote

I think it's so hard for us to understand how it could have been torn down because we're 60 years removed from the mindset of that time.

No buildings like this would be owned by private companies today, but that's what this was. a civilizational treasure owned by a private company. when that company's entire industry collapsed, people saw replacing something built by a dying industry as progress. didn't have the foresight to appreciate the rarity of what they had.

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brianvan t1_ixeaas8 wrote

It got a ton of blowback. People hated the plan! But it had no legal protection such as landmarking. If that solution were even available, Pennsy would have fought it. Teardown plans were already being circulated as early as 10 years prior to the actual teardown occurring.

Even today, notable buildings constantly get razed while LPC sits on their hands. And then non-serious proposals for small ugly buildings are put forward constantly by people just looking to lock out neighboring developments, wasting everyone’s time.

I would prefer to see deliberate public planning and architecture. With a serious budget. And with an open mind toward removing obsolete buildings to replace them with modernized versions of what came before it, minus all the ticky tack crap about reusing bricks and beams and what not.

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