The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station

About this book

This book offers a moving and tragic account of the history creation and the ultimate demise of the original Pennsylvania Station in New York City. An elegant symbol of turn-of-the-century classicism the station was designed by the preeminent architects of the period McKim Mead & White and completed in 1910. Accompanied by 80 vintage photographs Lorraine Diehl lovingly documents the labor involved in the creation of this great building and traces the mid-20th-century development interests and capitalist forces that destroyed it in 1963. While there was no public outcry to save the building once New Yorkers realized the extent of their loss it helped pave the way for a nationwide preservation movement. This book convincingly reasserts the profound importance of our public urban architecture--culturally socially and aesthetically--to our collective memory and history.