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Old plan that would’ve destroyed the beautiful eastside facing Colonnade entrance and walkways into the waiting hall and replaced it with a parking lot.
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It is a shame of what was lost during the 50’s and 60’s in the quest of being modern. Thank you Jackie Kennedy et al for opening peoples eyes to the destruction they were perpetrating in the name of modernization.
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As bad as it was here in NYC, smaller cities had it much worse. I recently visited Upstate NY including Buffalo and Niagara Falls and was shocked (but not surprised) to see vast parking lots (acres and acres) with barely any pedestrians where once stood vibrant, walkable pre-war neighborhoods. Seeing old photos is frankly depressing. The same can be said for most cities across the Midwest. At least NYC was able to retain its intensely urban character which ironically is one of the big reason the city continues to grow and thrive.
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Oy!
This is so sad. It makes me meshuganah!
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Everybody moved out to the burbs.
That plus Florida or Arizona 
A rebuild yeah…
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When was this proposed? And why? Was the thought to get rid of the Seventh Avenue facing side in order to save on maintenance costs and decrease tax assessments?
Also, did the old Penn Station include a portico on 33rd Street as shown in this rendering, or was the portico part of the proposed redevelopment?
From what I remember seeing, I think it was from 1960, so only 3 years before it was demolished. I don’t know of the reason though, it honestly may have been to generate some revenue/fundraise for the (at the time) new MSG development before it actually started construction, the west side couldn’t be the one to be demo’ed since the concourse was on that side.
As to the portico, there were always open colonnades on the 32nd and 33rd side of the building that I believe acted as access roads for drop offs/led to the sublevels.
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Deutsche Bauzeitung
Basement. Street height
Groundfloor Upper floor
7th Ave. street front
These are cross section drawings through Penn, I don’t know if I’ve found these on the internet before.
Collection by Miss Mackensen
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Thanks. So it looks like the entrances to the old Penn Station driveways that sloped down were from 7th Avenue. The 1960 plan to replace the Seventh Avenue side of Penn Station with a parking lot apparently involved adding mid-block entrances to the driveways on 31st and 33rd streets. But didn’t those basically slope down right after leaving 7th Avenue? Or would the new driveways just go on the same level as 33rd Street, and they would get rid of these pedestrian bridges?
I guess maybe we’ll never know; there seems to be very little available regarding the 1960 plan online, other than on Reddit.
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A centerpiece of the old City Beautiful movement. RIP -
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Per:
In his 2015 book Blue-Collar Broadway - The Craft and Industry of American Theater, Timothy R. White notes, “As in many other Moses projects, wrecking crews got to work before local leaders understood what was happening.”
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See second to last photo in this post. The old Gotham Bank building.
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