(jazzy piano music)
- [George] We're in the Brooklyn Museum
looking at a painting by George Bellows,
Pennsylvania Station Excavation.
So what we're looking at is a large hole in the earth
in Manhattan, and this was being excavated
in preparation for the building of Pennsylvania Station.
- [Margarita] Pennsylvania Station
took up eight acres of city space,
two city blocks, from 31st to 33rd Street
and from 7th to 8th Avenues.
- [George] And it's useful to locate
this incredibly ambitious project at a moment
when this great American city is rising up.
Skyscrapers are being built around the city.
This is a scale of ambition here that is unprecedented.
- [Margarita] And nowhere was that transformation
more evident than in the changes that were made
to the urban transportation systems during this era,
beginning with the construction
of the elevated railways in the 1870s,
the advent of streetcars in the 1890s,
and then the completion of the subway system in 1904.
- [George] This project was being undertaken
by a man named Cassatt, who actually is,
interestingly, the older brother of Mary Cassatt,
the American impressionist.
But the brother had a problem.
He was the president
of one of the wealthiest and most powerful railroads
in the United States that controlled much of the rail
between Chicago and New York.
The problem was that the train stopped in Jersey City,
and he needed to figure out a way to get his trains
into what had become the premiere city of the United States.
- [Margarita] And in fact, at that time,
commuters were taking ferries
to get from New Jersey to New York City.
So this was a big challenge for them
to figure out a way to construct underground tunnels
under the Hudson River and to construct
this new railway station in Midtown Manhattan,
which became transformed, not only as the center
of the city's transportation district,
but also its retail and entertainment districts.
- [George] But this painting is so unexpected,
because instead of seeing the triumph of the skyscrapers
of New York, the triumph of technology,
we're looking at this bleak, dirty pit in the earth.
- [Margarita] Bellows was really interested in conveying
the underside of the city's progress during this period.
He's using vigorous, raw slashing brushwork
to convey the snow and the details in the scene.
It has a very dirty and gritty quality,
and that's reflected in the bonfires
that we see here in the center of the composition,
in this acidic, garishly-colored sky
that's illuminated by bits of yellow and gold,
and most of all, by these billowing plumes of steam
and smoke that rise out of this gaping pit in the earth.
- [George] And if I think about historical precedents,
I start thinking about the engravings of Piranesi,
or images that were representing hell coming out of Dante.
Bellows has created a kind of man-made canyon.
- [Margarita] Bellows has very deliberately employed
this elevated vantage point and included these four workers
who are perched on the margins of this composition.
And by employing that elevated vantage point,
he also emphasizes this gaping pit in the earth.
- [George] And it's so interesting,
now that we know what rose in this place,
this beautiful Beaux Arts structure,
this structure that was recalling
the rationalism and beauty of the classical tradition.
- [Margarita] McKim, Mead, and White
designed the Beaux Arts structure of Pennsylvania Station,
the same architectural firm
that designed the Brooklyn Museum.
- [George] Right in the middle of the pit, we can see
rising up almost like the mast of a ship, the cranes
of steam shovels that were used in this demolition.
- [Margarita] And Bellows worked from memory,
but we also know that he was very much inspired
by the images that proliferated
in the mass media during this moment,
the many photographs and also literary accounts
that talked about the construction of the site.
- [George] New Yorkers were waiting in anticipation
for the building that would rise
out of this massive project.
This area had been densely populated.
This was not open space.
- [Margarita] This area of the city was known
as the Tenderloin, which is now modern-day Chelsea,
and it was populated by an African-American community,
thousands of which were displaced
for the construction of Pennsylvania Station.
- [George] What we're seeing is the pit
where the station itself would be located,
but slightly to the west of this.
The excavation continued,
and only in the last few years in New York
have we built over that, an area that's called Hudson Yards.
What we're seeing is the preparation
for the building of one of the most magnificent,
one of the most architecturally significant
buildings in New York City, Pennsylvania Station.
But it's not a building that survived.
- [Margarita] Unfortunately in 1963,
this wonderful railway station was demolished
to make way for what is now Madison Square Garden
and the current Pennsylvania Station.
- [George] The demolition of Pennsylvania Station
helped to rally support for an effort
that was already underway to create
the Landmarks Preservation Commission,
a part of New York City government.
- [Margarita] I find these kinds of paintings
to be a commentary on changing New York,
on old versus new New York,
and in a way, I see how this painting
even anticipates Berenice Abbot's Changing New York,
her photographic series from 1935.
And here, I think that Bellows is offering
a commentary on the underside of the city's progress
and on the challenges of modernity.
(jazzy piano music)