215 Park Avenue South, 1901
New York, NY 10003
212 962 6307

Penn Palimpsest

New York, NY

Program

Transit Hub

Client

The New York Times

Collaborators

Structure: Thornton Tomasetti

Facade and Sustainability: Level Agency for Infrastructure

Costing: Dharam Consulting

Size

2 city blocks

Status

Ongoing Advocacy Project

Pennsylvania Station is much more than a transit hub. It is the busiest transportation facility in the Western Hemisphere, it is at the heart of the city and region, and it is the lynchpin to reimagining its neglected surroundings. But beyond these significant concerns, Penn Station is also a symbol, from the extraordinary engineering feat it and its trans-Hudson tunnels represented in 1910, to the demolition of McKim, Mead & White’s Beaux-Arts spectacle in the 1960s, to its future disposition in the coming years.

In 2016 PAU was approached by the New York Times Opinion Section to create a new vision for Penn Station, something that elected officials and community groups had talked about for decades, with little to no real work being done. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the firm was able to present an idea for a Penn Station reborn—one that elicited a potent and dynamic public response. Since the publication of the op-ed, a new community advocacy organization, Public for Penn Station, has been formed as a 501(c)(3) in support of the proposal.

Read More