New York Pennsylvania Station
| Pennsylvania Station | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Data | |
| Design | Through station , tunnel station |
| Platform tracks | 21st |
| abbreviation | NYP |
| location | |
| City / municipality | new York |
| State | new York |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 40 ° 45 '2 " N , 73 ° 59' 38" W |
| List of train stations in the United States | |
The Pennsylvania Station , commonly known as short Penn Station is a transit station in the west of New York City District Manhattan . It was built in 1910. The historic station building was demolished in 1963, the current one completed in 1968. With around 600,000 passengers a day, it is one of the largest in the country.
history
The Railroads of Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) led to the beginning of the 20th century all from the West to the Exchange Place station in Jersey City on the west bank of the Hudson River . The PRR thus had no direct connection to Manhattan, the travelers had to change to a ferry to cross the Hudson River, which is more than a kilometer wide at this point.
The routes of the competing company, the New York Central Railroad (NYC), on the other hand, led from the north into Manhattan. She had a train station in Manhattan with the Grand Central Depot opened in 1871 on 42nd Street .
Several projects tried to create a direct connection for the PRR to Manhattan, where a new terminus was to be built. Construction of a tunnel to Christopher Street has already started, but the project had to be abandoned due to lack of funds. Another project tried to build a suspension bridge over the Hudson. The bridge to be built by the North River Bridge Company could have been used by all railways ending on the west coast of the river, but no railroad company except the PRR wanted to contribute to the costs.
After the PRR had bought the Long Island Railroad , however, they owned a railroad network both east and west of Manhattan, which created new opportunities for a through station in Manhattan with direct long-distance train connections from Philadelphia via Manhattan and Long Island to New England . Furthermore, new possibilities arose through the emergence of electric traction at the end of the 19th century , the maturity of which had advanced so far that mainline railways could be electrified, even if the projects were still on a modest scale. The electric locomotives were able to negotiate steeper gradients more easily than the steam locomotives and the tunnels remain smoke-free, so that the effort for tunnel ventilation could be kept low. After the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had good experiences with the electric operation in the Howard Street Tunnel in Baltimore and Alexander Cassatt , the then President of the PRR, had visited the PO's Gare d'Orsay in Paris , the PRR was working on a project for one new magnificent train station in Manhattan, which should be reached with underground access.
As the second largest railway company in the world at the time after the Prussian State Railway , the PRR tackled the New York Tunnel Extension Project. Planning began in 1901. The centerpiece was the newly built Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. The western approach leads through the North River Tunnels , the eastern one through the East River Tunnels . The new line to be built from Newark in New Jersey will cross the alluvial plain of the Hackensack River and run under Bergen Hill and the Hudson to Penn Station. The Crosstown Tunnels, which lead the route to the west coast of the East River, connect to the east of the new station. With an arch to the north, the route leads under the East River to Sunnyside Yard in Queens . The entire line was set up for electrical operation with 650 V direct voltage from a third rail . The maximum gradient in the west entrance is 19 ‰. The cost of the new route between Harrison and Sunnyside Yard, including Penn Station, was estimated at 100 million US dollars ; the actual costs were 150 million dollars, which corresponds to a purchasing power of 4 billion US dollars in 2020.
The attack shafts of the North River Tunnels were already being built from 1903, and the shield driving of the two single-track tubes began in May 1905. The station was built in 1904 and inaugurated on November 27, 1910 together with the access tunnels . The reception building was designed by the well-known architects McKim, Mead, and White and was considered a masterpiece of the Beaux Arts style . The building combined pink granite and a facade with column colonnades in the Greco-Roman style with station hall roofs made of steel and glass. The main hall with a height of 150 feet was one of the largest public halls in the world at the time, modeled after the not so high Caracalla baths in Rome . At just under 46 meters, the height was between that of the main nave of Cologne Cathedral (43.35 meters) and that of Milan Cathedral (46.80 meters).
The entire station took up two blocks between 7th and 8th Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets and was 3.2 acres. The total cost of the station and access tunnel project was $ 114 million.
Due to the rising land prices in Manhattan and the meanwhile desperate financial situation of the PRR, the demolition of the reception building began in 1963 in order to enable a development with profitable real estate. This happened despite strong criticism from the New Yorkers, which led to the establishment of a civil protection movement . However, the campaign was successful in that the monument protection law was changed and the planned demolition of the Grand Central Terminal was prevented in the 1970s and the Landmarks Preservation Commission was founded.
In place of the old Penn Central reception building, Madison Square Garden , the high-rise Pennsylvania Plaza and other buildings were built by 1968 . Opposite the train station is the Hotel Pennsylvania .
business
The station has 21 tracks , some of which are head tracks used by the Long Island Railroad . Commuter trains from the New Jersey Transit and long-distance trains from the Amtrak railroad continue to operate here today .
The train station is now chronically overloaded and is considered a “design disaster and logistical failure”. There are currently plans to expand it to include the neighboring James Farley Post Office , which would give it a historic entrance to increase the capacity and functionality of the existing station. The project runs under the slogan "Moynihan Station" after the US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003), who campaigned for it.
Moynihan Train Station
Across from the previous Pennsylvania Station, the new Moynihan Train Station will be built by 2021.
This new station would completely replace the old Penn Station.
The new Moynihan Train Station is located opposite the previous station on 8th Avenue and will be even larger than Grand Central Terminal New York. The new building has been designed with warm colors. The station will have wide aisles that can accommodate the expected flows of visitors. The entrances to the tracks will be enlarged so that large crowds can use the station.
Construction costs are borne primarily by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey , Amtrak, Metropolitan Transportation Authority , the City and State of New York . The reason for the investment is that the citizen should see that the state and the city will not leave him alone and that the taxes are used sensibly.
Trivia
In the Grand Central Terminal there is an exhibition on the demolished reception building of the Pennsylvania Station in a small branch of the New York Transit Museum .
literature
- Stefan Vockerodt: The Big Pennsylvania Hole . In: EisenbahnGeschichte Spezial 1: Railways in New York (2013) . ISBN 978-3-937189-77-2 , pp. 66-73 .
Web links
- Information on the planned expansion of Penn Station (English; PDF; 5.0 MiB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Kimmelman: When the Old Penn Station Was Demolished, New York Lost Its Faith . In: The New York Times . April 24, 2019, ISSN 0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 30, 2019]).
- ↑ Chris Fry: Hudson River History: Hoboken's North River Bridge. In: Jersey Digs. March 8, 2017, Retrieved February 28, 2020 (American English).
- ^ Charles W. Raymond: The New York Tunnel Extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad . In: The Project Gutenberg. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
- ↑ Albert J. Churchill Ella: The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846-1917 . University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8122-0762-0 , pp. 758 ff . ( google.cz [accessed March 1, 2020]).
- ^ Charles W. Raymond: The New York Tunnel Extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad . In: The Project Gutenberg. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
- ^ Gilbert H. Gilbert, Lucius I. Wightman, WL Saunders: The Subways and Tunnels of New York . John Wiley & Sons, New York 1912, p. 39 .
- ^ Davidson Gregg, Howard Alan, Jacobs Lonnie, Pintabona Robert, Zernich Brett: North American Tunneling: 2014 Proceedings . Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, 2014, ISBN 978-0-87335-400-4 , pp. 139–150 ( google.cz [accessed February 29, 2020]).
- ↑ $ 100,000,000 in 1910 → 2020. In: Inflation Calculator. Retrieved March 3, 2020 .
- ^ Regional Plan Association: Rebirth of a Gateway - Moynihan Station (November 2005), p. 4.
- ↑ Anthony Zizzo says: Penn Station's Aging Main Corridor Set For Pricey Makeover. March 15, 2019, Retrieved November 15, 2019 (American English).
- ^ Moynihan Train Hall. September 9, 2017, accessed November 15, 2019 .