PENNSYLVANIA STATION
Man muss sich vor Augen halten, dass die Penn Station ohne guten Grund abgerissen wurde! Wie man so ein wunderschönes Gebäude einfach zerstören kann...
Exterior
Pennsylvania Station sat on two city blocks, stretching from 33rd to 31st Streets. Half a mile of pink granite, quaried in Milford, Mass., was used to build McKim's monumental gateway. A Roman Doric colonnade ran along its Seventh Avenue entrance, surmounted by a low attic. Twenty-two eagles, fashioned by sculptor Adolph Weinman, perched over the station's four entrances, alongside sets of maidens who were draped over huge clocks. All of the eagles survived the station's destruction. Only a few of Weinman's maidens escaped a New Jersey landfill.
Main Waiting Room
Modeled after the Roman Baths of Caracalla and comparable in size to the nave of St.-Peters in the Vatican, this elegant room was made of travertine marble, a honey-colored stone imported from Tivoli, Italy, that grew lustrous with the human touch. Standing on its pink marble floors, one looked up 150 feet to a coffered, vaulted ceiling.
Concourse
Architect Charles McKim had the great train sheds of Europe in mind when he designed this metal-and-glass birdcage of a room. Light filtered down from its barrel vaulted ceiling, through glass-and-cement floors to the train tracks below street level. Dust particles hung in the air, undisturbed by the train announcer's voice ringing through the vast space. In this room of blacks and greys and shadows, one's mind took a journey before one even entered a train.
Carriageways
Flanking the Seventh Avenue entrance to Penn Station, two carriageways, modeled after the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, brought passengers to the Main Waiting Room. A passenger taking a Pennsylvania train would ask to be taken the the "Penn side," while passengers who wanted the Long Island Railroad would request the "Long Island side."
Quelle: http://www.powwmedia.com/pennsy/rrtour.htm
Als Deutscher beruhigt es einen vielleicht, dass auch im Ausland wunderschöne Gebäude ohne Grund dem Erdboden gleichgemacht werden. Es ist also nicht eine typisch deutsche Krankheit.
So sieht übrigens heutzutage ein Eingang der Penn Station aus:
:puke: