Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 49, 2018

Pennsylvania Station was a historic railroad station in New York City, named for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), its builder and original tenant. The station occupied an 8 acre plot bounded by Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan. It was designed by McKim, Mead, and White and completed in 1910. Its head house and train shed were considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the great architectural works of New York City. As the terminal shared its name with several stations in other cities, it was sometimes called New York Pennsylvania Station, or Penn Station for short. Passenger traffic began to decline after World War II, and in the 1950s, the Pennsylvania Railroad sold the air rights to the property and shrank the railroad station. In 1963, the above-ground head house and train shed were demolished, a loss that galvanized the modern historic preservation movement. Over the next six years, the below-ground concourses and waiting areas were heavily renovated, becoming the modern Pennsylvania Station, while Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Plaza were built above them. The sole remaining portions of the original station are the platforms at the station's lowest level, as well as scattered artifacts on the mezzanine level above it.