One of the eagles from Penn Station sits on the campus of Niagara University. Niagara Fall NY. The Niagara Purple Eagles.
I think NYP should never have been built where it was, and and was an overbuilt facility.
At least GCT was built with traveller traffic flow in mind.
As a young boy I recall visiting Pennsylvania station. The first half block was a beautiful stone structure but the other half block was a high glass ceiling atrium where the steps to the tracks were. There was also a bus depot on the 8th Ave side. You would enter and go up the steps by the Greek columns on 7th Ave walk through some nice corridors/ halls and arrive in the massive glass ceiling area. It was a sight to behold and it could never be duplicated. It should have never been torn down.
The good news is that Monihan station being built in the old Farley Post office building was designed by the same architectural firm and the exterior will look a lot like old Pennsylvania Station.
@Dominic Mazoch posted:I think NYP should never have been built where it was, and and was an overbuilt facility.
At least GCT was built with traveller traffic flow in mind.
Penn Station was as well, the current Penn Station bares little to no resemblance to the original in terms of flow, the current design is a rabbit warren designed by moles on drugs. The original Penn Station had two different sets of subway lines available to it (granted, the subways came after it was built, the 7th avenue line in the teens and the IND 8th ave in the 20s), plus it straddled two different major thoroughfares. Comparing the current Penn Station to Grand Central isn't fair . Had Grand Central been knocked down, as almost happened, it likely would be like Penn Station today. The original Penn Station was one of the busiest train stations in the world and served that well, it handled traveler flow pretty well.
Penn Station was lost because the railroad was bankrupt and looking for any source of money (and Penn Station at the time it was destroyed needed a lot of work, and likely was a maintenance burden), it was a time when a lot of people assumed trains, whether commuter trains or long distance trains, were a thing of the past (the car was still seen as freedom and when Robert Moses still had plans to turn NYC into a giant highway system), and also most people didn't pay attention to historical buildings being lost, lot of people were big on progress. Add to that egos, political considerations (the MSG/ Penn Towers project and the demolition brought construction jobs during a slump in construction amid a recession). They also didn't see the obvious, that with the movement to the suburbs as part of the post WWII boom commuting was going to become a major player at Penn Station, they figured the replacement would suffice until the LIRR disappeared, and likely long distance trains and the NJ trains that used the station back then would be gone, too...and that didn't happen, commuter rail boomed as the burbs grew, Amtrak kept going , the car in many ways choked itself, and modern times have been left with the consequences (Penn Station is one of the busiest commuter hubs in the world today). Grand Central was almost lost the same way, it wasn't until the early 70's that a court finally ruled that the landmark preservation law was legal and they had the authority to landmark it, a more conservative court very likely would have said that the city couldn't do that.
Many of the columns and the interior and exterior statuary was unceremoniously dumped in an area along Penhorn Creek, east of Secaucus Rd. and north of the former PRR main line, in Secaucus, NJ.
Most of it became covered over during subsequent development of the area.
A number of years ago, I read an online piece by an amateur archaeologist who had discovered the whereabouts of the lost dump site and was in the process of organizing an entity to salvage a number of significant pieces and find appropriate homes for them.
I never saw any follow-up to the original posts.
Here is a link to a famous photo of the dump site when the remains of the station were first placed there.
I believe the author identified this copse of trees as the place where he discovered the ruins.
By and large, the US has always been a forward-looking society working under the premise that new = better/old = worthless.
@Mike W. posted:Yet Europe takes national pride in preserving history.
not all of europe! If this were the case the Greeks would have rebuilt the Parthenon! The roman colliseum would have been restored. Etc.
In Europe they do cherish the past, otherwise the Parthenon would be a parking lot and the site of the Colliseum would be a strip mall. Rome fell almost 1500 years ago, the Parthenon was built 2500 years ago and was destroyed by idiots. Houses in Europe are often 500,600 years old, we just don't have the history they do. Plus there has been the attitude that new is better, though these days they have figured out that old buildings bones provide a much better experience renovated then torn down *shrug*.
I found the original article, from 1998: I Sing the Meadowlands by Robert Sullivan.
There also used to be a blog, by the author, which detailed his various explorations of the area and
his efforts to repatriate some of the remains of Penn Station. I can no longer find that blog online.
That’s a great read. My mom’s family grew up in Bergen Hill Communities. My Uncles used to talk about their young adventures to Snake Hill
I hope they didn't reside on the Hill. 
