One month ago, I wrote a column praising London and its leaders for the blue-sky thinking that led to the historic preservation of the beautiful new Battersea Power Station. Once a derelict industrial plant, it is now a multipurpose miracle of shops, parks and Apple’s European headquarters, all breathing fresh life into the city.
I also lamented that, when it comes to dreaming big, New York City has run out of steam. We can’t even finish rebuilding the World Trade Center, let alone transform a decayed, machine-age structure into a gleaming modern gem for vibrant public use.
Not long after, I heard from Brooklyn-based architect Alexandros Washburn, a passionate lover of the city who was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s head of design. He’s long advocated for “rebuilding Penn Station as the magnificent cathedral it was,” as he wrote in a 2021 essay.
Washburn told me he has a Big New York Idea. He has even drawn up the plans. They are so inspiring I wanted to share them with you, here in these pages.
The building is Penn Station. Even with construction work going on now to improve it, the transit hub remains a subterranean horror show. The endless, ongoing, inch-by-inch “transformation” of entrances and corridors has only made the underground maze harder to navigate than before.
Right now, our government’s plan for a “New Penn Station,” if Gov. Hochul gets her way, is to tear down the surrounding neighborhood, destroying hundreds of people’s homes by eminent domain and constructing giant new office skyscrapers in their place. It’s a terrible, corrupt $22 billion scheme nobody wants — unless you’re one of the governor’s wealthy real-estate donors.
Washburn’s idea comes from a different planet.
His dream is to reflect the style and spirit of the original, beloved McKim, Mead & White masterpiece opened in 1910 that was unconscionably demolished in 1964. More than a much better station, his plan opens up optimistic possibilities for the mostly charmless West 30s between Seventh and Ninth avenues.
The original station’s colossal Concourse would be reconstructed in an airier form, as much as today’s technology allows. It puts the public — not real-estate companies — first, with an open-to-all, street-level lawn as large as Bryant Park and an exciting array of community amenities. It puts the station, the nation’s busiest with 600,000 daily users, ahead of speculative real estate development for which there is little or no demand.
Here are just some of the highlights:
- The monumental, main indoor public space will be above ground and sunlit — a spirits-lifting portal for riders of Amtrak, the LIRR, MTA subways and New Jersey Transit. This triple-vaulted, glass-and-steel train hall, inspired by the old Concourse, would rise between Seventh and Eighth avenues on the site of what’s now the Two Penn office building. (A 1960s warhorse that landlord Vornado Realty Trust has prettied up with a new facade and other upgrades.)
- Two Penn would be demolished, and its office floors relocated to new office towers built to the site’s north. Removing the tower makes way for construction of a new, block-long Seventh Avenue facade of granite or marble to replicate the original facade.
- A street-level, green public park will bloom where Madison Square Garden currently stands. Classical pavilions acknowledge the original station, which was modeled on ancient Roman baths. Park-goers and station-users below can glimpse each other through ground-level skylights.
- Madison Square Garden would move elsewhere. (It’s moved twice before, so there is precedent.) The Garden’s license with the city is up in June 2023. The Dolans, who own the arena, have shown no enthusiasm to relocate their eyesore. But it’s the only hope for a truly new Penn Station. Hudson Yards, which is only half-built, might be just the place for it. The Yards’ developer, Related Companies boss Stephen M. Ross, has tried to woo the Dolans to join the complex.
The Garden, of course, is the largest impediment to Washburn’s proposal. But budging the Dolans might not be as impossible as many believe. They were at least open to relocating the Garden to the Farley Building to the west as part of an area redesign plan backed by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer in 2007 — until his hooker scandal, and subsequent resignation, doomed the idea.
Now, with so much at stake for New York City, it’s time for our pols and planners to roll up their sleeves, forget the distractions, and embrace the dream.
Cutting through this Gordian knot of complexities requires unprecedented cooperation among city agencies, the mayor, the City Council, the Dolan family, Amtrak (which owns the station), the MTA, and, yes, Vornado, the very same developers that Hochul’s boondoggle would favor.
It needs Hochul and the Empire State Development agency to back off their insane plan that would override city zoning and demolish scores of sound buildings and businesses based on fraudulent claims that the area is “blighted” — all to make way for eight new office skyscrapers at a time of record office vacancies.
Sure, Washburn’s proposal might seem too fanciful, too complicated, to realize. But he argues that both Bryant Park and the all-new High Line prove that civic miracles are still possible when public and private interests join forces for the common good. And he has proposed a timeline that could get it all done by 2029.
The original Penn Station retains a mythic hold on the memories of everyone who knew her. Departing passengers knew a great land lay beyond the Hudson River, and her heroic scale and majesty told arriving riders they were entering the greatest city in the world.
I never got over my childhood awe when I stepped off the LIRR to my first sight of the Concourse and Penn Station’s equally mammoth Waiting Room — both vast enough, as Thomas Wolfe wrote in “You Can’t Go Home Again,” to “hold the sound of time.”
Let’s bring that awe back to New York. This is an occasion to think beyond the minutiae and open our collective imagination to what could be — with both respect for the past and boundless promise for the future.