REBUILD PENN STATION
A Conversation and An Exhibition
New York City’s original Pennsylvania Station was America’s most august railroad terminal and one of the great architectural wonders of the world. Winston Churchill knew it well, passing through it on so many of his visits to the United States.
Simply stated, we want to help bring it back.
Join us THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4 @ 6:00pm, in the lobby of the Park Avenue Plaza building, 55 East 52nd Street (between Park & Madison Avenues), for an evening with Rebuild Penn Station; a conversation with the organization’s leaders and design collaborators Atelier & Co. and RethinkNYC.
RSVP: 212-308-0643 or chartwellbooksellers@gmail.com
Along with wine and cheese, we will also be serving up a photography exhibition of never-before-seen photographs of the original Penn Station taken by the late-Bob Parent, whose extraordinary jazz photographs we showcased at an exhibit some years ago.
Opened in 1910, to a miraculous design by McKim, Mead & White, and torn down in 1963 for a shamefully inferior replacement, Penn Station today remains one of our city’s great lost causes.
Now it would seem that change is coming. Plans for an improved station are being circulated by Governor Cuomo and others. The best solution, however, for all concerned, is to rebuild Penn Station as McKim, Mead & White first envisioned it — updated with the latest technology and materials, of course — but fundamentally reincarnated.
Pictured at left, Parent’s resonant image of the Penn Station track sign for the train to the March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington on August 28, 1963, where Dr. Martin Luther King would deliver his “I Have A Dream” speech.
And from our own archives, a photograph of Winston Churchill and Mrs. Churchill at Pennsylvania Station on March 24, 1949, in a private pullman on the Washington-bound ‘Judiciary Train,’ prior to departing for a meeting with President Truman.
