‘Through it one entered the city like a god … one scuttles in now like a rat,’ the architectural historian Vincent Scully wrote, in the most quoted aphorism about why it is our duty to adulate Old Penn Station and despise the current one. But this Penn Station is not here to flatter you. It is here to move you, if you know where you are going. If you know where you are going, it will deliver you on your personal atomized commuter-trail, through the entrance of your choice, down the crazy dark stairs you want, to the very door you want of the train you want. Why should you be forced through a grand entrance and into a mob of thousands of people on the floor of a great hall, if all you desire is the 7:49 to Flushing?
Despite my love for the Beaux-Arts original and my extreme distaste for the current Penn Station, this piece by Tom Scocca and Choire Sicha in the NYT opinion pages makes a whole lot of sense. It reminds me of the debate about listing Mid-century Modern buildings on the historical registry. Even though this architecture is pretty recent, it represents a particular time and place in architectural history and should be treated as such.
