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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 725.31097471
EAN num: 9781568580609
ISBN number: 1568580606
Label: Basic Books
Manufacturer: Basic Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 168
Printing Date: November 14, 1996
Publishing house: Basic Books
Sale Popularity Level: 447982
Studio: Basic Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
This work traces the history of the creation, operation, and demolition of New York's Pennsylvania Station.
Amazon.com Review:
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.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Much has been written about the late, great, Pennsylvania Station, and yet it can never be too much. This landmark should be standing today, with it's pink granite shinning in the sun, and being a becon in cloudy weather. In the 1960's, in many other cities their grand "Union Stations" were being sectioned off and abandonded, some are still standing as ruins today, this is part of the irony of Penn Station's demise, even in the 1960's there were hundreds of passenger trains using the facility daily, and this number has been climbing since.
The author gives us all the facts and figures about this station, from it's planning, short life, and needless destruction. However she also paints the human picture of this building, and in doing so lets us understand how the public allowed this building to slip away.
The opening of Penn Station was celebrated during the final years of the Gilded Age, acted as shelter to thousands during the Great Depression, and it served as a virtual military base during the WW II years.
To the multitudes of returning vets, and their famalies, the railroads and Penn Station represented the past, and times that they all would rather forget. Remember back then there was not the mental health counselling available to the returning soldiers, and one way they coped was to simply forget the past, and all that it contained.
In this book we see that the stations fate was sealed with VJ Day, and the social changes that started to take shape with WW II's end.
By the 1950's, Airplanes and Interstate Highways were in, Railroads were out. Yet at least in the NYC area, commuter trains still played an important role that never went away. The beautiful building was allowed to decay, and was altered by a private company without any accontability required to the public.
By the early 1960's some of the public finally woke up, and NYC's Landmark Preservation Committee was formed, by it was too late for the "Temple of Transportation".
This book also contains an excellent compliment of photos, including a number from the 4 year, yes, four year period it took to destroy the station.
Ken
Rated by buyers -
Very good book which takes into account the historical background of why Penn Station was built in the very first place right through to its destruction. A tragic loss not only for New Yorkers but for America and this book describes it well.
Rated by buyers -
This book is facinating and so well written, I really could not put it down, the author has a real sence for the history and importance of the building, I agree it could have used more visuals, but that is a minor quibble and really does not take away from the merit of the book. I must take some exception to the review of Mr. Jendrysic, in all due respect he misses the point totally of perservation when he says the building was a white elephant that was in the wrong place and in the red, that may have all been true, but in those cases you find other uses for the building, like Paris did with the Orsay train station and the colossel Louvre as well as Versailles, I mean would you call for the pulling down of Versailles??? and the Orsey Museum is spectacular. This was not just any building, this was a masterpiece a true treasure, that could have been coverted to other uses, buildings of this quality should be persevered, period, not torn down like some 50's tract house. I highly recommend this book in everyway, if you have any interest in great buildings or just wonderful books quite frankly, then you will not be disappointed in this book, you are right about one think Mr. Jendrysic this book is very first rate.
Rated by buyers -
Mr. Mark S. Jendrysik is from North Dakota. What in the world would he know or care about New York City? Judging by his past reviews, he is a big business apologist in a square state in the middle of nowhere.
A native New Yorker myself, I could not imagine my city without Grand Central, for instance, or SoHo, Central Park or the historic area of Chelsea and the West Village. Some things are worth preserving.
Rated by buyers -
I was barely seven years old when old Penn Station was torn down, but I remember the sadness and outrage of my neighbors in Brooklyn. I had only been to the station once or twice but I was too young to remember. I didn't really understand the big fuss about its destruction. And after it was gone, I don't remember there being too much grieving.
Now looking back, through films and books, I understand what it was all about. "The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station" by Lorraine B. Diehl is the best book on the subject that I've come across. Her analysis of the rise and fall of McKim's great station is both awe-inspiring and heart-breaking. The smattering of beautiful photographs is a plus, as well. Penn Station's demise, of course, could be regarded solely as a loss for the city but, as Ms. Diehl explains, the real legacy of the destruction was the enormous preservation/conservation movement that followed. In the aftermath, so many other buildings were spared a similar fate.
There are those who say that the people behind Penn Station's demolition were justified (Ms. Diehl rightly avoids villifying anyone). The apologists for the destruction claim that Penn Station was too big, in the wrong place, and was in the red. The Empire State Building was erected ten blocks south of the midtown business area and three miles north of the Wall Street district. It was a very big building and rarely had over 50% occupancy until the 1950s, when it finally began earning money. Should it have been knocked down too?
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