World Famous Comics: The Destruction of Penn Station
The Destruction of Penn Station
From: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. Publisher: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 128 Publication Date: March 15, 2001 Release Date: February 02, 2001
Product Description: Opened to the public in 1910, McKim, Mead & White's Pennsylvania Station featured a dramatic vaulted glass ceiling over its expansive main concourse and was inspired in part by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, giving visitor and commuter alike an experience of grandeur in entering and leaving the city. The decision in 1962 to replace the old station and its subsequent demolition ultimately proved to be key moments in the birth of the historical preservation movement--a movement that came too late to save Penn Station itself. But during this period one might on any given day of the week, have seen Peter Moore in the station, carefully photographing the building and the process of its destruction, even as above his head--and above the heads of the 200, 000 commuters who transversed the station each day--cranes were beginning to take down what had been one of the grandest public buildings of the 20th century. Moore visited the Station again and again between 1962 and 1966 to document its architectural form as well as the drama of its ''unbuilding.'' The resulting photographs combine compositionally elegant images of architectural form and details with haunting pictures of glass and masonry stripped away from steel girders as the building is progressively demolished.
Very good This is a wonderful photo representation of the desecration and destruction of a beautiful train station. It provided me with images and emotions I have not otherwise experienced in reviews of the original Penn Station. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the subject and photography!
Horrific Destruction This book just takes your breathe away, the images are so vivid and shocking. How on earth could anyone sign off on destroying this colossel beauty, it's something I just can't get my mind around. I am so grateful that this was documented, as hard as it is too look at, people need witness these pictures to make sure it does not happen again. Many people credit the outrage over the razing of this McKim, Mead, and White masterpiece with helping save Carnige Hall and Grand Central, which though appreciated, does not lessen the sadness over the loss of this New York City treasure, it really is such a tragic loss. I highly recommend this book for its text, great visuals, and the power is thought it provoks: great book.
So that it doesn't happen again.... I am one of the generation of New Yorkers that have grown up with the ghost of the old Penn station - and its unfortunate replacement. We have been forever robbed of this stately thing, which was so much more than a building. Watching it's slow death in these haunting pictures makes me hope this is the last time we have used our imagination to destroy rather than build. (This is an especially painful irony in light of our recent tragedy.) Get this book, and look at it with your children. And may we never treat the human-made beauty around us with such contempt again.
It was like watching someone die day by day I remember as a kid in the mid-70s taking the train to NYC and having to endure the commuter's nightmare known as "modern" Penn Station.
In the late 80s, I learned what once was on the site of the current MSG/Penn Station monstrosity and became appalled that people could let a beautiful work of art be dismantled and replaced with a horrible building. In the early 1990s, I learned about the 1950s and 1960s and how Americans were obsessed with all things modern and new, rejecting anything with a hint of age or ornament.
Moore & Moore take a pictorial look on how the McKim, Mead and White's neoclassical masterpiece was dismantled over a multi-year period in the mid-1960s. While they really don't go into detail on why the old Penn Station was demolished, the spooky, B & W photos tell more than how an architectural gem was demolished. On a deeper level, the photos tell the tale of how an entire city was becoming irrelevant to suburban America and was sinking into massive decline (the years of municipal bankrupcy and burning neighborhoods in the South Bronx are only a few years away).
It was a very sad book that gets more depressing with each turn of the page, as more and more of the beauty of the old Penn Station gets stripped away. I guess that was the power of the photographs working on me.
Pair this book up with Robert Caro's _The Power Broker_ to get a good picture of New York in the early Baby Boom era.
Must-buy for New York and/or McKim, Mead & White Buffs This is an extraordinary, heartbreaking, must have book for anyone who loves New York and/or McKim, Mead & White's work.
Photographer Peter Moore and his wife Barbara moved into the Penn Station neighborhood in the early sixties. They used the building every day, whether they were passing through to the subway or catching a bite in the cavernous coffee shop.
With the railroad's permission, they documented its slow dismantling over the four years from 1963-1967. This book is the first appearance of that work. The black and white pictures are arranged chronologically, showing the faded but still magnificent station from its last days of active use through to its ghostly presence as a metal shell. The photography is beautiful and lyrical and sad beyond words, like a mournful love song to a love lost. The picures of the rubble-filled waiting room, its shape still intact but its side walls gone, are especially hard to take.
One note: this is not an exhaustive review of the building and its various spaces. It is a chrono picture of the concourse and waiting room through through their destruction. For more pics of the station in use, try "The Late, Great, Pennsylvania Station."
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