=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2004/09= /03/DDGNN8IHML1.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, September 3, 2004 (SF Chronicle) Will the proposed new Penn Station ever be completed? Nicolai Ouroussoff, New York Times New York -- As Republican notables gathered in Madison Square Garden this week to celebrate the candidacy of President Bush, New Yorkers might point to a pressing concern across the street: how to jump-start the plan to create a stunning new Pennsylvania Station in the neo-Classical shell of the old James A. Farley post office building. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the project, with its soaring glass-enclosed great hall, was originally unveiled in 1999. It has been a pet project of politicians from both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for whom the proposed station is named, and Gov. George Pataki. Most of the $800 million needed to complete the project's construction has been in place since 2001. And the post office abandoned the space this summer, in part to make room for the news media covering the convention. Essentially, all that is needed is the approval of Amtrak, a federal decision that would only require a nudge from President Bush. Yet on Tuesday, when the head of the Moynihan Station Development Corp. and Childs held a news briefing to draw attention to the project, it was essentially ignored by all the crucial players: Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Charles A. Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corp., the state agency that oversees development in New York. Gargano has also been culling proposals for development of the 800,000- square-foot post office annex that faces Ninth Avenue and is not part of the existing plan. Whatever is decided, Gargano has said that he will not delay construction of the station. But among the ideas being considered is a misguided plan to move the existing Madison Square Garden to the site, which could ultimately mean scrapping the current design and starting from scratch. Meanwhile, Congress recently threatened to reallocate $40 million of the $800 million to a project linking the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal on the East Side. Anxiety is building among some planners that the new Penn Station may never get built -- a setback that would be a major blow to the city. In practical terms, the project is far more important than Santiago Calatrava's $2 billion design for a new transit station at ground zero. Despite its symbolic importance, Calatrava's station would basically serve as an entry point to the PATH Trains and 14 subway lines. By comparison, Penn Station is already the busiest transportation hub in the country. With half a million passengers passing through each day, it is a psychological as well as literal gateway to the city. Just as important, Skidmore's expansive design would be a big step toward rectifying one of the greatest architectural tragedies in the city's history: the 1964 demolition of McKim, Mead & White's glorious 1910 Pennsylvania Station, a monument to American democratic values, and its replacement by the dark, claustrophobic present-day station, one of the most dehumanizing public spaces in the city. The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill proposal acknowledges this historical context without slipping into nostalgia. The Farley Building's main facade, with its grand staircase and row of Corinthian columns, would remain intact and would continue to serve as a post office. The new station entrance would be on 31st and 33rd streets midway between Eighth and Ninth avenues. It would replace the post office's loading docks, which currently join the original McKim, Mead and White post office and its banal 1935 addition. The most stunning feature is a soaring asymmetrical glass roof, whose curved form would funnel light down into a grand entry hall. The enormous glass shell that defines one side of the roof is supported by crisscrossing steel braces; the roof's other side is supported by a more delicate web of cables. Together, they create a wonderful visual tension, as if the entire station were about to be set in motion. Approached from the east, the roof would be nearly invisible. Only its t= wo ends would project out over 31st and 33rd streets, marking the station's entry. Once people enter the structure, the roof's curved form would suggest an enveloping arm, gently steering passengers toward the tracks underneath Eighth Avenue. From here, the project is conceived as a series of decks that cascade do= wn to the platforms below. Passengers would move eastward from the great hall into the former mail sorting room, stepping down to a series of decks that support the main departure and arrival areas. From here, passengers could peer up at the train schedule board. Just below it, an enormous glass floor would open onto views of the passing trains. A series of escalators would pierce this glass surface to connect to the platforms. Located in the post office's former courtyard, the entire space is enclosed by an enormous glass shed roof. The roof, which was painted over in the 1940s, will be reopened to allow natural light to funnel directly down into the tracks. The sequence of levels is made possible by a stroke of dumb luck: since Penn Station's existing track platforms already extend underneath Eighth Avenue, the distance the architects needed to travel to connect the new station to the existing platforms was minimal. Yet the effect is to create a nearly seamless sense of flow between the pedestrian life above and the trains flowing underneath. The cascading platforms create a remarkable architectural rhythm between shadow and light, past and present, the flow of pedestrians and the movement of the trains. It is as if the entire structure were propelling you toward the future. It is the power of that vision of the modern democratic city, and its potential undoing, that has many in the architectural community wringing their hands. What better time to exploit the project's value as a public relations tool than now? --------------------------------------------------= -------------------- Copyright 2004 SF Chronicle