- Hi, I'm Michael Wyetzner, and I've been an architect
in New York City for over 35 years, and today,
we're gonna look at three outstanding New York buildings
that were torn down and see what replaced them.
[soft jaunty music]
Let's start with the iconic original Penn Station.
So right away, I notice the main facade
along 7th Avenue, these pedimented entrances north
and south which allow cars to enter in
and the central entrance for pedestrians,
which is six Doric columns
supporting a flat entablature with this medallion on top.
In fact, all the columns are Doric,
which is the simplest of the Greek orders,
and the column spacing is based on Bernini's Piazza in Rome.
So it's built in the Beaux-Arts style,
which refers to the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts in Paris,
which was the most famous and most influential school
of architecture at the time.
And what Beaux-Arts style generally means
is that it just refers to historic precedence,
mainly classical style, Greek and Roman,
and along those lines,
you can see that this great waiting room that pops up
above the rest of the building is actually based
on the baths of Caracalla from Ancient Rome.
The building was completed in 1910
by the great architectural firm of McKim Mead, & White.
McKim, Mead, & White were sort of the go-to architects
of the Gilded Age.
They designed many outstanding buildings,
some of which still exist,
including the Washington Square Arch,
the library at Columbia University,
and the library at NYU in the Bronx,
which is now Bronx Community College.
Penn Station was not only a great architectural triumph
but it was also an amazing engineering triumph
'cause they had to build tunnels under the Hudson River.
Before Penn Station was built, there were no tunnels
under the Hudson River yet.
You had to stop in Jersey City and then take a ferry
across the Hudson River to get into Manhattan,
but with the building of Pennsylvania Station,
now you're entering into this unbelievably ornate
and soaring space.
Let's take a look at the interiors.
So here we're looking at two different parts of the station.
On the left we're looking at the waiting room,
and on the right we're looking at the train shed
from which people descended down to the platforms.
So what jumps out at me right away
is the vaulted coffered ceiling
in the waiting room and the similar forms in steel
on the right-hand side at the train shed,
this one done in steel, this one done in stone,
and instead of the coffers which you see here in the stone,
here it's the small panes of glass
to let light in for the skylights,
but you could see the same groin vaults
being formed in both spaces,
and then if we look directly into the waiting room,
you see this huge entrances that come in
and out from 7th and 8th avenues.
And you could also see the stairs that lead
to 33rd and 31st Street at the ends
with these huge clerestory windows
that let the light pour in,
this coffered ceiling all built out of travertine,
quarried in Tivoli outside of Rome,
which is also, by the way, the same stone they used
to build the coliseum in Rome thousands of years before.
But the other thing that stands out
is the incredible scale of this room.
I mean, just look at the size of a pedestrian here.
It's a great soaring space and one
of the greatest spaces not only in New York
but probably in the world when it was built.
So as one ascended from the train up into the station,
your first point was this amazing skylit train shed,
which was very reminiscent and influenced
by the great train sheds of Europe.
However, the shapes are still reminiscent
of what we see in the stone-encased central waiting room.
And so what's really interesting about all this steel
is that this was the most advanced technical building
that was done in this era of 1910 when it was completed.
All the columns and all the beams
and all the arches that you see are all built up out
of these much smaller pieces that all get riveted together,
and they form this beautiful lacy framework,
and what's significant about this is that these two pieces
of the building are actually more similar
than what you can see because, in fact,
this beautiful stone room is actually a forgery.
The stone is not holding up the room.
It's actually being held up by steel, in fact,
the same steel that holds up this great train shed
at the rear along 8th Avenue.
And what's also remarkable about this building
is it was not built by the government.
It was not built by the city. It was not built by the state.
It was built by a private company.
They owned the land.
They owned the building,
which is significant in terms of its demise.
So unfortunately, this building only lived for 50 years.
The decline of the railroads
left the Pennsylvania Railroad Company
on the brink of bankruptcy, and to survive,
they actually had to sell the building to a developer,
and thus, the building was knocked down.
And it's really tragic because this fantastic building
had fallen on hard times,
and the maintenance of it had declined, but nonetheless,
it was still one of the greatest buildings in New York City,
and it's unfortunate that this had
to be the sacrificial lamb.
But because this building was demolished,
the landmarks movement began,
and the Landmarks Preservation Commission was created,
and today, this building would never
have been permitted to be knocked down, and, in fact,
that's what saved Grand Central Station
just a few blocks north.
- [Announcer] New York's Pennsylvania Railroad Station
has reached the end of the line.
A landmark for tourists and native alike,
the huge granite monument to the age
of elegance is falling to the wreckers.
There were organized movements to save this example
of what architects call great American design.
The underground tracks will remain,
but the station with its famous clock will be replaced
by a modern sports palace, the end of a landmark.
- So this building was demolished in 1963.
What stands where this train shed
and this waiting room used to stand
is the modern-day Madison Square Garden,
which is actually the fourth version
of Madison Square Garden.
But let's take a look
at the most iconic Madison Square Garden,
which is actually the second iteration at its original site.
So the first version of Madison Square Garden
was actually built in the 1870s.
The version we're gonna look at now was actually built
in the 1890s also by McKim, Mead, & White,
but this was built by Charles McKim's partner,
Stanford White, who not only designed it,
but he also lived there and died there,
and we'll talk about that later.
So in this image on the right,
we're looking at the building from Madison Square,
looking to the northeast.
This image on the left,
it's actually Park Avenue right in front,
and Madison Avenue is in the distance along 26th Street.
So here's everything that jumps out at me.
It's a Renaissance revival building.
It's built out of this buff brick
that Stanford White was very fond of,
and you could see this beautiful arcade
that he included so people could stand out
from under the weather when buying their tickets,
and then you could see this loggia,
which is another version of an arcade,
but where the arcade at the bottom
has these beautiful Renaissance arches, at the top,
it's just columns supporting a flat entablature,
and then there's a ballade above it.
And then he has these turrets,
these domed pieces at the corner, and mid block,
he has them as well, flanking the main entrance.
If you look at the image on the left,
you can see he also included a lot of terracotta ornament
that he outlines the blind windows
on the corner turrets with.
So this image on the left gives you a really good idea
of the scale 'cause the building runs from Park Avenue,
which you could see in front with the trolley tracks,
all the way to Madison Avenue, which is in the distance.
So it's a really big building
that encompasses an entire New York City block.
So the main arena hosted a variety of events,
including presidential convention, circus acts, boxing,
as well as a velodrome for bicycle racing,
and what was notable about the main arena as well
is that it actually had a sliding skylight,
which was really an amazing sort of amenity for the 1890s.
One of the most salient features
of this Madison Square Garden was this great tower,
which is actually based on the Giralda Campanile
at the cathedral in Seville in Spain.
In fact, the whole building is based
on Stanford White's love for Spanish architecture.
And he wanted this tower as a sort of signpost
for the building so that people
would see it along the skyline,
and he also wanted to compete with Joseph Pulitzer
and his New York World newspaper building,
which was down at Park Row,
for the tallest building in New York City,
and to do that, he included a statue of the huntress Diana,
and what I love about that is he based this
on a tower that is at a cathedral in Spain.
So where the cathedral is a tribute to God and religion,
he puts a nude statue on top of his tower
as a symbol of pleasure and entertainment.
The investors did not want him to build this tower,
and he really had to fight to get it built,
and after they built it,
they didn't know what to do with it.
So to make money, they actually rented it out as apartments,
and Stanford White rented one of those apartments,
and he stayed there when his family was away.
And Stanford White not only lived here,
but he was actually murdered here, and on the roof,
which you could see contained behind this arcade
was where the actual garden was which was an outdoor sort
of restaurant and cafe that also had shows,
and that's where he was killed by the husband
of the woman he was having an affair with in 1906.
This Madison Square Garden also had trouble making ends meet
and eventually was torn down in the 1920s
and was replaced by the New York Life Insurance Building,
which is still there to this day.
So let's take a look at another building
that also wanted to compete with Joseph Pulitzer
and his New York World building,
also designed by Stanford White,
and that's the New York Herald building.
So right away, I noticed a few things.
Let's just put the building in context.
You could see the elevated train line
along 6th Avenue here on the right,
which is the east side of the building.
You could see Broadway here on the left
with the trolley cars.
So on the main entrance facade,
he creates this recessed entrance under the arcade,
which is actually somewhat semicircular in plan,
and then, above it, there's this dual arched window,
and above that are the bell ringers,
which are actually printing press workers
and the statue of Minerva.
The other thing that jumps out at me
is all this wonderful terracotta decoration
that sits between the windows,
and the other thing the building has is this hip roof
with a flat zone in the middle
because the site is actually trapezoidal,
and the arcade itself sits on this little platform,
which is called a stylobate,
which was used in many Greek temples.
And the other thing that white did
was he included this plaza out front,
which still exists, known as Herald Square.
So the "New York Herald" was started by James Gordon Bennett
and then was inherited by his son James Gordon Bennett Jr,
and James Gordon Bennett Jr saw the future
of New York was moving northward.
Before this, all the newspapers
were at what's called Park Row,
and all their buildings were there just next
to City Hall downtown.
So he decided to move northward
to the intersection of Broadway and 6th Avenue
where they crossed 36th Street on this wedge-shaped site
of what is now the autonomous Herald Square.
James Gordon Bennett Jr. knew Stanford White from Newport
where all the rich people hung out
at the turn of the century in Rhode Island, and, in fact,
white had designed the interiors for his yacht,
and Bennett liked those designs,
and so he asked him to design his new headquarters
for his newspaper.
And this building is actually not only inspired by
but pretty much a direct replica
of the Loggia del Consiglio in Verona.
So the Loggia del Consiglio
is a Venetian Renaissance palazzo which was built in 1476,
and that, in fact, is based on the founding hospital
by Brunelleschi, which was built in the 1420s in Florence.
So at the Loggia del Consiglio
where the architect there puts statues
along the edges above each pilaster,
Stanford White put owls, which Bennett had asked him to do
because he felt those sort of symbolized the wisdom
of his newspaper, and those owls, actually,
he placed electric green light bulbs in
so that night, the eyes glowed.
So the building was completely demolished by 1930,
but some of its remnants you can still see today
in Herald Square, including the statue of Minerva,
the bell ringers, and some of the owls.
So unlike the previous buildings we looked at,
which were replaced by somewhat iconic buildings,
this one was replaced
by a very ordinary pedestrian office building, which,
at its base, currently leases to a bank and a drug store.
So we've just looked
at three great McKim, Mead, & White buildings
that no longer exist, and that was sort of the mindset
in New York City at the turn of the century,
that progress was king and that things were torn down
and new things were rebuilt in their place.
But if New York had been more historically minded,
especially in the 1960s when Penn Station was brought down,
some of these buildings might still be there,
and as the "New York Times" stated after the demise
of Penn Station, "Ultimately we are judged not
by the monuments we create but by those we have destroyed."
Let me know what other iconic demolished buildings you'd
like to see discussed in the comments below.
[soft upbeat string music]