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Course: Special topics in art history > Unit 1
Lesson 7: Documenting and protecting cultural heritage- Diarna: documenting the places of a vanishing Jewish history
- A Landmark Decision: Penn Station, Grand Central, and the architectural heritage of NYC
- Frameworks for cultural heritage protection: from ancient writing to modern law
- A race against time: manuscripts and digital preservation
- Provenance and the Antiquities Market
- Saving Torcello, an ancient church in the Venetian Lagoon
- A Renaissance masterpiece nearly lost in war: Piero della Francesca, The Resurrection
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A Landmark Decision: Penn Station, Grand Central, and the architectural heritage of NYC
Penn Station, a grand Beaux-Arts style building in Manhattan, was demolished due to declining railroad usage and real estate value. The loss sparked protests and led to New York City's Landmarks Preservation Law, protecting architectural heritage. This law was tested and upheld at Grand Central Terminal, another historic train station. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- In the new building, how come it’s windowless. Is it for security reasons?(4 votes)
- The current Penn Station building is windowless (the station part) so that the valuable real estate (where windows might be) can be rented out at higher rates. The tracks for all 4 railroads that serve the station (MRT, LIRR, NJT and AMTRAK) are all underground anyway.(5 votes)
- Sure do love the landmarks preservation in New York City(3 votes)
- I liked the idea of the law and appreciate that such law is in place. My question is that wouldn't such law will cause less aesthetic property as private land overs will be less likely now to build such aesthetic building to escape restrictions for future constructions / improvements ? Would you end with lots of buildings looking similar to each other ?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(bright piano music) - [Narrator] We're standing
in Pennsylvania station, in the heart of Manhattan,
underneath Madison Square Garden. - [Narrator] Penn Station
takes up an entire city block, from 31st to 33rd street,
from seventh avenue to eighth avenue. So when it opened in 1910, you could enter the building
from each of the streets but the majority of people would have
entered from seventh avenue and they would have preceded
down a grand hallway which would have intersected, mid block, by a towering hall that looked quite close to the Baths of Caracalla
from ancient Rome. - [Narrator] This is a
moment at the tail end of the Beaux-Arts style that is the style that is informed by classism by way of the renaissance and the baroque. - [Narrator] When you walked passed the towering waiting room and moved towards the train tracks, you would enter into this
large glass and iron atrium. This train shed very much in the style of the great 19th century
European train stations. - [Narrator] The key issue for
most people was the grander, the scale of these spaces. You have to keep in mind that
before the second world war, this was the primary way that Americans traveled
from one place to another but beginning of the 1950s
Americans begin to travel by air, they began to benefit from
the interstate highway system and consequently the railroads
were selling less seats. - [Narrator] Because
of their new railroad, realized that one of it's
great assets was real estate, in the center of Manhattan. - [Narrator] The space above the tracks. - [Narrator] And so the railroad decided to demolish Penn station, maintaining the tracks below ground, building a new Penn station
underneath office towers, at Madison Square Garden. - [Narrator] Most people felt that this would keep the railroads alive but what was overlooked is
that there would be the loss of an unforgettable building. - [Narrator] And there
were protests, architects, preservation-minded citizens asked that the railroad reconsider
and preserve the building. - [Narrator] But it was too late, so many steps had been taken
and the debt was so great that it was impossible to reverse it. - [Narrator] And so the
building was demolished. - [Narrator] It took two years
to demolish the building. - [Narrator] And it was
replaced with a building that New Yorkers now love to hate. - [Narrator] It is a
building that is underground, it is dark, it is windowless,
it still does the job, it is still the busiest train
station in the United States but it is not a building that
you would bring anyone to see. - [Narrator] The idea
that a city had the right to landmark privately owned buildings, is a radical one that it
could impose regulations on private real estate
development is something that doesn't exist in the United
States in the 19th century. - [Narrator] New York
City had always put growth ahead of anything else, it seemed whatever was new was better. - [Narrator] And the result is, we've lost some really
important landmarks. Federal Hall, the first
seat of government, the place that George Washington
was inaugurated is gone but slowly through the 19th century and into the 20th century
this began to change. In 1965, New york City
put a law on it's books, that said that the city had the right to protect it's architectural heritage. - [Narrator] New York
looked to New Orleans which had taken steps to protect the french
quarter in the 1930s. - [Narrator] So Penn station was gone, the New York's Landmarks
Preservation Commission had been created but it
was as yet, untested. - [Narrator] You can have a law but you you have to interpreter the law and you have to execute
the law and then you have to select which building
should be protected by the law. - [Narrator] Let's walk over to the other great train
terminal in New York City, Grand Central Terminal. - [Narrator] It's where
the law was tested. - [Narrator] We've walked
over to Grand Central, it's an enormous facade
that like Penn station, is also borrowing from the
history of architecture but in this case we're calling a great ancient Roman triumphal arch and the scale of this
building gives us a sense of what Penn station
would have looked like. - [Narrator] Rather than
having a train station spread out on a single block, this is a much smaller site and the tracks are on two levels. - [Narrator] And that was possible because this train station was designed to accommodate electrified tracks, whereas the older technology, steam had required huge open sheds that could accommodate the
billowing steam and smoke. By the time we get to
the mid 20th century, the New York Central Railroad which controlled Grand Central
Station was falling victim to the same economic changes that had precipitated the
demolition of Penn station. The railroad decided
to build a skyscraper, including a plan to place the skyscraper
in front of the terminal and a plan to place the
skyscraper on top of the terminal. - [Narrator] But these
plans required the approval of the New York City Landmarks Commission which had designated
this building a landmark. - [Narrator] And ultimately
the landmarks commission rejected both of those plans. - [Narrator] When Penn Station was lost, there was no legal means
to protect the building but at this time, the New York City Landmark's
Preservation Commission, could protect this building
and have the power to determine what alterations were
considered to be appropriate. - [Narrator] And needless to say, the landowner didn't
agree with the decision that the Landmarks
Preservation Commission reached and brought them to court and ultimately, the case ended up in front of the United States Supreme Court. - [Narrator] And it was difficult to say how it would turn out, large groups of people
traveled from New York to attend the decision. - [Narrator] Ultimately
the supreme court found that New York City did
indeed have the right to establish laws that if determined were
in the best interest of the city as a whole in order to protect what it believed were significant
pieces of architecture. - [Narrator] So when the law was passed and the commission was created, most people felt that the main goal was to protect historic structures, to protect places where
historic events had occurred but if you read the law, it viewed there being
many layers of benefits. - [Narrator] Chapter three of the New York City Administrative Code that deals with the
landmarks preservation law, states that this is to the benefit of the economy of the city
and to promote the use of historic districts, landmarks, interior landmarks and scenic
landmarks for the education, pleasure and welfare of
the people of the city. (bright piano music)