Late, Great Penn

by Lorraine B. Diehl

Book Overview

This work traces the history of the creation, operation, and demolition of New York's Pennsylvania Station. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0828906033
• ISBN13: 9780828906036
• Release Date: February 1987
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Looking back at New York's lost treasure

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?

Moves you to tears

...that such a magnificent work of art was not deemed worthy of preservation in 1963. In the opinion of a number of architectural historians, Pennsylvania Station was the grandest building ever erected in the United States. The photos in this marvelous book certainly make that case very convincingly. And they give me an overwhelming sense of melancholy. I'm just a tad too young to have any recollection of the lost station, but I regularly pass through its depressing successor. One architectural critic opined that whereas the old station made you feel like royalty in entering the City of New York, the current station makes you feel like a scurrying rat. Lorraine B. Diehl is passionate about her subject. She grew up in the neighborhood, and the great station fascinated her from childhood, when it was a vast, wondrous world for her and other kids. As she matured, she came to appreciate not only the architectural details, but the station as a backdrop to American history, witnessing the comings and goings of countless people in peace and in war. In one of her favorite quotations, Thomas Wolfe (in "You Can't Go Home Again") said that the great station was "vast enough to hold the sound of time." Whether you're interested in railroads, architecture, engineering (the story of how the railroad tunnelled under the Hudson River and built the station is fascinating in itself) or history, this book is a must read. If you're ever in New York, make a point of taking one of the author's free tours of the station, 12:30 PM on the 4th Monday of each month from the information desk. She's as an engaging a guide as she is an author, and you'll see some hidden remnants of the old station that other visitors can't.

Moving Book -- Needed More Pictures

This was a moving book that made me wish I was around to see Penn Station in all of its glory. The author does not hide her disgust for the new structure -- often calling it "squalid". I couldn't agree more. The only think worse than the current station is the horrendous arena that sits above it.One wish, though -- for more photographs.

Destruction Of A Monument

Lorraine B. Diehl has written an account that covers the birth, life and death of the former Pennsylvania Railroad station that will make you feel like you have walked in the station yourself.From the story of the sandhog tunneling under the Hudson river to the sculptor who carved the stone eagles perched above the entrances, Diehlbuilds an image in your mind along with the wonderful photographs through out the book that will evoke a feeling of loss without ever having stepped foot inside.This detailed and well researched account will make an excellent additionto any architecture or railfans bookshelf.

A poetic, heartfelt tribute to a lost monument.

There are many losses for which we mourn, but one might never expect to mourn for a building, let alone an old train station. But Pennsylvania Station itself was as monumental as the tragedy of its thoughtless, needless destruction by the greedy, short-sighted ends of small-minded businessmen, and the inexplicable and inexcusable civic apathy that let it happen. Today's Madison Square Garden is the most horrendously designed sports arena in the nation; that and the pitiful remains of Penn Station that lie buried beneath it only deepen the wounds inflicted by the loss of McKim, Mead and White's masterpiece. Diehl paints a loving portrait of a stone and steel palace of mythical proportions, one so vivid and poetic that the very idea of this magnificent, colossal monument lying in ruins while a banal pile of concrete went up in its place becomes truly heartbreaking. Through this book Penn Station becomes in death what it was in life: romantic, majestic, inspiring.