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| Re: Penn Station 100th Anniversary? (975431) | |||
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Re: Penn Station 100th Anniversary? |
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Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Sep 5 01:30:26 2010, in response to Re: Penn Station 100th Anniversary?, posted by murray1575 on Sat Sep 4 07:35:22 2010. Don't forget that when the original station was conceived and built no one could have predicted the extent of the rapid growth which occurred in the following years (in no small part due to Penn Station and Grand Central's existence)Rapid growth of what? There was a reason why Exchange Place Terminal remained open for fifty years after Penn Station opened. When the station opened no subway line even existed to serve it; that didn't happen until 1918 (IRT) and 1932 (IND) That's perhaps not the point. There were still the Sixth and Ninth Avenue lines, and the Hudson & Manhattan served three of five waterfront terminals. Nor could anyone have predicted the other factors such as the rapid expansion of auto and air travel after WWII which led to the decline in fortunes of the railroads No, people were predicting that the railroads would have competition from those other modes; nobody predicted that the government would step in and distort the market so much. I agree that somehow something could have been done to preserve at least part of the station as was done with Grand Central The truly rotten thing is that GCT wouldn't have been preserved if the fall of the original NYP edifice were so profound in the public's eyes. Of course, the profundity thereof wasn't enough to reverse NYP's demolition. |
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