Pennsylvania Station (often abbreviated to Penn Station) was a historic railroad station in New York City that was built for, named after, and originally occupied by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). The station occupied an plot bounded by Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan. Because the station shared its name with several stations in other cities, it was sometimes called New York Pennsylvania Station. Originally completed in 1910, the aboveground portions of the building were demolished between 1963 and 1966, and the underground concourses and platforms were heavily renovated to form the current Pennsylvania Station within the same footprint.

Designed by McKim, Mead, and White and completed in 1910, the station enabled direct rail access to New York City from the south for the first time. Its above ground head house and train shed were considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the great architectural works of New York City. Underground, the station contained 11 platforms serving 21 tracks, in approximately the same layout as the current Penn Station, which has had various intervening modifications. The original building was one of the first stations to include separate waiting rooms for arriving and departing passengers, and when built, these were among the city's largest public spaces.

Passenger traffic began to decline after World War II, and in the 1950s, the Pennsylvania Railroad sold the air rights to the property and shrank the railroad station. Starting in 1963, the above-ground head house and train shed were demolished, a loss that galvanized the modern historic preservation movement in the United States. Over the next six years, the below-ground concourses and waiting areas were heavily renovated, becoming the modern Penn Station, while Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Plaza were built above them. The sole remaining portions of the original station are the underground platforms and tracks, as well as scattered artifacts on the mezzanine level above it.

Design Occupying two city blocks from Seventh Avenue to Eighth Avenue and from 31st to 33rd Streets, the original Pennsylvania Station building was designed by McKim, Mead & White. The overall plan was created by Charles Follen McKim. After McKim's health declined, William Symmes Richardson oversaw the completion of the design, while Teunis J. Van Der Bent oversaw the engineering. Covering an area of about , it had frontages of along the side streets and long along the main avenues. The land lot occupied about along 31st and 33rd Streets.

Over of dirt had been excavated during construction. The original structure was made of of pink granite, of interior stone, of steel, of brick, and 30,000 light bulbs. The superstructure consisted of about 650 steel columns. The building had an average height of above the street, though its maximum height was . Some or of track surrounded Penn Station. At the time of Penn Station's completion, The New York Times called it "the largest building in the world ever built at one time".

Exterior

The exterior of Penn Station was marked by colonnades of Roman unfluted columns based on the Classical Greek-style Doric order. These columns, in turn, were modeled after landmarks such as the Acropolis of Athens. The rest of the facade was modeled on St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, as well as the Bank of England headquarters. The colonnades embodied the sophisticated integration of multiple functions and the circulation of people and goods. The colonnades had a strong horizontal orientation, interrupted only by the lunette windows and the roof of the waiting room. The ornamentation was intentionally simple, with emphasis being placed on the "unity and simplicity" of different parts of the design. The roof was made of Monel alloy, an Inco product.

Entrances and colonnades The building had entrances from all four sides. The main entrance was at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street, at the center of the Seventh Avenue facade. It was the most elaborate of Penn Station's entrances. Above the center of the entrance, above the sidewalk, was a clock with faces. Two plaques were placed above the arcade entrance. One plaque contained inscriptions of the names of individuals who had led the New York Tunnel Extension project, while the other included carvings of franchise dates and the names of contractors.

Twin carriageways at the northeast and southeast corners, modeled after Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, led to the two railroads served by the station. One carriageway ran along the north side of the building, serving LIRR trains, while the other the south side served PRR trains. The walls of each carriageway were flanked by pilasters for a distance of . Ramps spanned the carriageways and led into the waiting room and concourse. The carriageways descended to the exit concourse at the middle of the station. From there, vehicles could travel to the baggage drop on the eastern end or return to Seventh Avenue. A separate passageway along the south side of the station carried baggage to the Eighth Avenue end of the station.

An open colonnade was used along the north, east, and south facades. The entirety of the east facade had a Doric-style colonnade. The easternmost portions of the north and south facades, adjacent to the carriageways, also contained colonnades. Each column measured high by across. The remainder of the facade contained pilasters rather than columns. An approximately section of the Eighth Avenue facade was divided into three large openings, which comprised a large rear entrance to the main concourse.

The station contained four pairs of sculptures designed by Adolph Weinman, each of which consists of two female personifications, Day and Night. These sculptural pairs, whose figures were based on model Audrey Munson, flanked large clocks on the top of each side of the building. Day was depicted with a garland of sunflowers in her hand, looking down at passengers, while Night was depicted with a serious expression and a cloak over her head. The Day and Night sculptures were each accompanied by two small stone eagles. There were also 14 larger, freestanding stone eagles placed on Penn Station's exterior.

Interior

Penn Station was the largest indoor space in New York City and one of the largest public spaces in the world. The Baltimore Sun said in April 2007 that the station was "as grand a corporate statement in stone, glass and sculpture as one could imagine." Historian Jill Jonnes called the original edifice a "great Doric temple to transportation". The interior design was inspired by several sources, including French and German railway stations; St. Peter's Basilica; and the Bank of England.

Entrance arcade The main entrance on Seventh Avenue led to a shopping arcade that led westward into the station. The arcade measured wide by long, with a similar width to 32nd Street. Cassatt modeled the arcade after those in Milan and Naples, filling it with high-end boutiques and shops. The stores were included because Cassatt wanted to give passengers a cultural experience upon their arrival in New York. At the western end of the arcade, a statue of Alexander Johnston Cassatt stood in a niche on the northern wall where stairs descended to a waiting room where passengers could wait for their trains. There was also a statue of PRR president Samuel Rea directly across from Cassatt's statue, on the southern wall, which was installed in 1930.

Main waiting room The expansive waiting room, which spanned Penn Station's entire length from 31st to 33rd Streets, contained traveler amenities such as long benches, men's and women's smoking lounges, newspaper stands, telephone and telegraph booths, and baggage windows. The main waiting room was inspired by Roman structures such as the baths of Caracalla, Diocletan, and Titus. The room measured long, wide, and tall. Additional waiting rooms for men and women, each measuring , were on either side of the main waiting room.

The room approximated the scale of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The lower walls were of travertine, while the upper walls were expressed in a steel framework clad in plaster, decorated to resemble the lower walls. The travertine was sourced from Campagna in Italy. This made Penn Station the first major American building to use travertine. The north and south walls each contained small colonnades of six Ionic columns, which flanked the staircases on those walls. There were also larger Corinthian columns on pedestals, measuring about tall from the tops of the pedestals to the tops of the capitals. There were eight lunette windows on top of the waiting room's walls: one each above the north and south walls and three each above the west and east walls. The lunettes had a radius of .

The artist Jules Guérin was commissioned to create six murals for Penn Station's waiting room. Each of his works were over high, placed above the tops of the Corinthian columns. The murals themselves measured tall and across. They contained maps depicting the extent of the PRR system.

Concourses

Penn Station was one of the first rail stations to separate arriving and departing passengers on two concourses. Directly adjoining the waiting room was the main concourse area for departing passengers, with stairs directly to each platform. The floor area of the main concourse was variously cited as having floor measurements of or . This concourse was covered by glass vaults that were held up by a plain steel framework. The glass roof measured . McKim wanted to give "an appropriate transition" between the decorated nature of the waiting room and the utilitarian design of the tracks below. After the general shape of the vaults was determined, Purdy and Henderson designed the steelwork. The steel frame was less heavy at the top.

LIRR commuters could also use an entrance on the northern side, along 34th Street. The LIRR commuter concourse was above the tracks. There was an additional mezzanine level below the main concourse and waiting room for arriving passengers; it contained two smaller concourses, one for each railroad. The smaller northern mezzanine, used by the LIRR, connected to the LIRR platforms via short stairs and to the 34th Street entrance via escalators. The smaller southern mezzanine, used by the PRR, contained stairs and elevators between the PRR platforms and the level of the main concourse and waiting room.

Running from north to south was a separate exit concourse, measuring wide. This concourse led to both 31st and 33rd Streets and was subsequently connected to the subway stations on Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Two stairways and one elevator led to the exit concourse from each platform.

Platforms and tracks The tracks were variously cited as being or below ground. At platform level, there were 21 tracks serving 11 platforms. LIRR trains had exclusive use of the station's northernmost four tracks, while the PRR was exclusively assigned the southernmost tracks. The two railroads shared the center tracks as necessary. An estimated of storage tracks in and around the station could store up to 386 railcars. The station contained 25 elevators for baggage and passenger use. The storage yards were located between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in a cut that was later covered and built over. The structure above it was supported by 650 steel columns, each supporting a weight of up to .