Pennsylvania Train Station, NY
Estuve viendo la documental sobre esta estación en History Channel y realmente no puedo entender como los yanquis pudieron acabar con semejante edificio, va... si puedo.
Estructura Original (1910–1964)
The original structure was made of pink granite and was marked by an imposing, sober colonnade of corinthian columns arranged in Doric order. The colonnades embodied the sophisticated integration of multiple functions and circulation of people and goods. McKim, Mead and White's Pennsylvania Station combined frank glass-and-steel train sheds and a magnificently proportioned concourse with a breathtaking monumental entrance to New York City. It was immortalized in films (see link below). From the street, twin carriageways, modelled after Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, led to the two railroads that the building served, the Pennsylvania and the Long Island Rail Road. Its enormous main waiting room, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, approximated the scale of St. Peter's nave in Rome, expressed here in a steel framework clad in travertine. It was the largest indoor space in New York City and, indeed, one of the largest public spaces in the world. Covering more than seven acres, it was, said the Baltimore Sun in April, 2007, “As grand a corporate statement in stone, glass and sculpture as one could imagine”.[9] In her 2007 book, Conquering Gotham: a Gilded Age Epic – The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels, historian Jill Jonnes called the original edifice a “great Doric temple to transportation”.[10]
During the more than half-century timespan of the original station under owner Pennsylvania Railroad (1910-1964), hundreds of intercity passenger trains arrived and departed daily, serving distant places such as Chicago and St. Louis on “Pennsy” rails, and beyond on connecting railroads to Miami, Florida, and the west. In addition to the Long Island Rail Road, other lines using Pennsylvania Station during that era were the New Haven and the Lehigh Valley Railroads. For a few years during World War I and the early 1920s, arch rival Baltimore and Ohio Railroad passenger trains to Washington, Chicago, and St. Louis also used Pennsylvania Station, initially by order of the USRA, until the Pennsylvania Railroad terminated the B&O's access in 1926.[11] The station saw its heaviest usage during World War II, but by the late-1950s intercity rail passenger volumes declined dramatically with the coming of the Jet Age and the Interstate Highway System.
The demolition of the original structure — although considered by some to be justified as progressive at a time of declining rail passenger service — created international outrage.[9]. As dismantling of the grand old structure began, The New York Times editorially lamented:
Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance.[12]
Actual estación. Desabrida como un yanqui.
Amplios espacios, como antes...
DemolitionAfter a renovation covered some of the grand columns with plastic and blocked off the spacious central hallway with a new ticket office, Lewis Mumford wrote critically in The New Yorker in 1958 that “nothing further that could be done to the station could damage it”. History was to prove him wrong. Under the presidency of Pennsylvania Railroad's Stuart T. Saunders (who later headed ill-fated Penn Central Transportation), the above-ground components of this structure (the platforms are below street level) were demolished in 1964. Although the demolition did not disrupt the essential day-to-day operations, it made way for present-day Madison Square Garden, along with two office towers. A 1968 advertisement depicted the architect's model of the final plan for the Madison Square Garden Center complex, which would replace the original Pennsylvania Station.
A point made in the defense of the demolition of the old Penn Station at the time was that the cost of maintaining the old structure had become prohibitively expensive. The citizens of New York City were unwilling to shoulder the costs of maintaining and cleaning their beloved station. The question of whether it made sense to preserve a building, intended to be a cost-effective and functional piece of the city's infrastructure, simply as a “monument” to the past was raised in defense of the plans to demolish it. As a New York Times editorial critical of the demolition noted at the time, a “civilization gets what it wants, is willing to pay for, and ultimately deserves”.[13] Modern architects rushed to save the ornate building, although it was contrary to their own styles. They called the station a treasure and chanted “Don’t Amputate - Renovate” at rallies.
Only three eagles salvaged from the station are known to remain in New York City: two in front of the Penn Plaza / Madison Square Garden complex, and one in the courtyard of the School of Engineering at The Cooper Union.[15] Three are on Long Island: two at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point and one at the Long Island Rail Road station in Hicksville, New York. Four reside on the Market Street Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, across from that city's 30th Street Station. One is positioned near the end zone at the football field of Hampden-Sydney College near Farmville, Virginia. Yet another is located on the grounds of the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
The furor over the demolition of such a well-known landmark, and its replacement by what continues to be widely deplored as a mediocre slab, are often cited as catalysts for the architectural preservation movement in the United States. New laws were passed to restrict such demolition. Within the decade, Grand Central Terminal was protected under the city’s new landmarks preservation act — a protection which was upheld by the courts in 1978, after a challenge by Grand Central’s owner, Penn Central.
The outcry over the loss of Penn Station prompted activists to question the “development scheme” mentality cultivated by New York’s “master builder”, Robert Moses. Public protests and a rejection of his plan by the city government meant an end to Moses' plans for a Lower Manhattan Expressway.
In the longer run, the sense that something irreplaceable had been lost contributed to the erosion of confidence in Modernism itself and its sweeping forms of urban renewal. Interest in historic preservation was strengthened. Comparing the new and the old Penn Station, renowned Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully once wrote, “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.” This feeling, shared by many New Yorkers, has led to movements for a new Penn Station that could somehow atone for the loss of an architectural treasure.
Perdón que no lo traduje, pero era mucho. Igual creo que se entiende bien. ¿No?
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Cazzo si las conozco, laizard. Viví en Sao Paulo. La mejor de Brasil a mi entender es la Estação do CPTM (antiguamente La Luz) pero coincido en que en los dos países vecinos existe un cuidado mucho mayor que en el nuestro. Allá no solamente se restaura, se mantiene. Acá se lava la cara o en el mejor de los casos se arena por única vez (como la espectacular Belgrano Norte en Retiro) y después quedan a merced del tiempo, el hollín y la fauna vernácula.
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