Title:
Some New Yorkers Don't Miss the Train -- They Miss
the Old Station
Description: This is
a VOA Special English General News Report.
See text below
Text:
One hundred years have passed since New York's
Pennsylvania Station opened its doors. The building
stood in the middle of Manhattan for more than 50
years. Today, only the underground area remains.
Lorraine Diehl wrote a book about Penn Station. She
remembers playing there as a child.
LORRAINE DIEHL: "Every space just sort of triggered
your imagination. For instance, when you walk in
from Eighth Avenue, that was the great train shed,
the concourse, and it was this extraordinary space
of great vaulted iron columns and a glass ceiling,
and the dust particles would just drift in and just
be frozen in space. And you felt that this was a
room of journeys. Your mind took a journey before
you ever got on a train in this space."
The old Penn Station was covered with statues of
eagles and young women. Artist William Low never saw
the building. But he used old pictures and
descriptions to make a picture book about it.
WILLIAM LOW: "It's just awe-inspiring. It would be
like the first time I saw the Grand Canyon. The idea
of this immense space -- you can't put it into
words."
Low painted the separate rooms of the station: the
concourse, the restaurants and waiting room. The
Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the owner of Penn
Station. By the early 1960s, the company was
failing. So it sold the above-ground building to the
developers of a sports center -- Madison Square
Garden.
WILLIAM LOW: "It was torn down. And the sculptures
were ripped apart and unceremoniously dragged and
dumped into the New Jersey Meadowlands."
Only six architects protested when the building came
down in 1963. Slowly, other people came to regret
the loss. This led to New York's Landmarks
Protection laws.
PEG BREEN: "Nobody is happy with Penn Station as it
exists in New York today. People who never even saw
the original Penn Station mourn its loss. It was
probably the greatest architectural crime that has
been committed in New York City."
Peg Breen heads the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
Her group has been working to turn an old Post
Office building across the street into a new version
of Penn Station.
PEG BREEN: "This was built in 1912 by Charles McKim,
the architect of Pennsylvania Station, and it's the
architectural twin to the old Penn Station. It was
built when public spaces were built to honor the
public, and when you walked into a building, it
said, you know, 'This is a great city, you are a
good citizen in a wonderful space.'"
The changes are expected to cost more than $1
billion. The building can never really take the
place of the old Penn Station. But Breen's group
says it will give train passengers arriving in New
York a beautiful door into the city. I'm Barbara
Klein.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
