Commuters under the grand clock in Pennsylvania Station, 1943. To view more portraits of the lost treasure, click the link below. (📷 Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection) LIFEMagazine AlfredEisenstaedt PennStation TravelTuesday NewYork
Penn Station, 1963: Walker Evans’ Portraits of a Lost TreasureWritten By: Liz Ronk
The splendid Beaux-Arts style terminus, which took up two city blocks in midtown Manhattan and featured a 15-story ceiling and a waiting room almost as long as a football field, was inspired by some of the greatest architecture of the ancient world. Designed by the celebrated firm of McKim, Mead & White , Penn Station was conceived and constructed on a scale that felt and looked at-once heroic and deeply, comfortingly human.
Above the scurry and tumult of travelers, clocks tick away the final hours of a grand and historic monument. New York’s Pennsylvania Station is doomed. Its herculean columns, its vast canopies of concrete and steel will soon be blasted into rubble to make way for a monstrous complex sports arena [today’s Madison Square Garden — Ed.], bowling alley, hotel and office building. The disaster that has befallen Penn Station threatens thousands of other prized American buildings.
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