Book Description

"Opened to the public in 1910, McKim, Mead & White's Pennsylvania Station gave the traveller, visitor, and commuter alike an experience of grandeur never before seen in the United States. With its dramatic vaulted glass ceiling over its expansive main concourse, Pennsylvania Station was a monument not only to train travel but an architectural icon of New York City and one of the grandest public buildings of the 20th century. In 1962 the decision was made to demolish the station as train travel gave way to the speed of the airplane. No one could have foreseen that the destruction of Pennsylvania Station would prove to be one of the key moments in the birth of the historic-preservation movement. Visiting the station between 1962 and 1966, Peter Moore documented the station's demise in photographs that combine elegant images of architectural form and detail. There are haunting pictures of glass and masonry stripped away from steel girders as the building is progressively destroyed. The commuters and the public seem to be unaware of what is happening directly overhead in photographs that convey a poignancy for a building lost forever."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved