Because it was dismantled over 50 years ago, many people are familiar
with the grandeur of the original Penn Station only through
photographs. The station was opened to the public on September 8, 1910 and the cost of the exterior alone was over $100 million.
Seen from the exterior, the beautiful McKim Mead and White masterpiece
represented a merging of modernity and classic architecture.
The interior was spacious and wondrous to behold. But according to
the Pennsylvania Railroad, the owners of Penn Station, by the mid
1950’s, it was also grimy, outdated, in need of costly repairs and
difficult to keep clean. These conditions existed mostly because the
Pennsylvania Railroad let the station fall into that state.
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