Pennsylvania Depot Excavations ca. 1906 The construction of the monumental Pennsylvania Station required the demolition of 500 buildings and the digging of tunnels under the East and Hudson Rivers. Construction took more than fifteen years, but the result was a magnificent gateway to New York City, connecting Long Island and cities all along the Eastern Seaboard to the metropolis.

Explore Lower Midtown. Observe skyscrapers vying for height 🏙️ and glimpse the grandeur of historic hotels, theatres, and public buildings. Join the hustle and bustle of NoMad and wander the quiet, quaint blocks of Gramercy Park🌳.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, New York underwent a profound physical and cultural transformation. Fueled by the wealth of the exploding financial and manufacturing sectors, the city rapidly evolved into a world-class metropolis. The bold ambitions of civic and business leaders, architects, and engineers of the era manifested in landmarks such as the vast Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the stately U.S. Custom House, the towering Municipal Building, and the original terminus of New York City’s first official subway line—the ornate City Hall stop. The sweeping interior spaces common to all of these structures, and hundreds of others, depended upon a venerable Mediterranean building technology adapted to contemporary American construction: arched tile ceilings—or vaults—that were not only self-supporting but could also bear the weight of floors or roofs above them. These vaults were designed and built by a single New York firm, founded by Spanish immigrant Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908) and later headed by his son Rafael Jr. (1872-1950). The Guastavinos’ patented system for building domes and vaults involved multiple layers of thin ceramic tiles bonded with quick-drying mortar. The resulting structures were not only exceptionally strong, but also lightweight, easy to build, and inherently beautiful, thanks to intricate patterns of exposed tile that formed finished, decorative surfaces. Guastavino vaults figured prominently in more than 1,000 projects across the nation, including 200 in Manhattan alone. During its 73-year history, the Guastavino Company helped build some of the most impressive interior spaces in America—veritable palaces for the people. This list based on MCNY's exhibition Palaces for the People, contains many of Guastavino's masterpieces in the five boroughs, both those that remain and those that have been lost to the wrecking ball.

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” 🏙️

Here at Urban Archive, we often focus our stories on the city streets and the public-facing architecture of the city. However, being stuck inside our apartments has given us a new appreciation of interior so we thought we'd take a look at some of New York's finest interiors over the years. This story looks at the portals by which millions of people have entered and exited New York. These transportation hubs were (and in some cases still are) the first sight many have had of New York.

Pennsylvania Station, 1912. The grand, Beaux-Arts terminal of the Pennsylvania Railroad became a casualty of development — and a galvanizing symbol for the city's preservation movement — upon its demolition in 1963. The station was the brainchild of Penn. Railroad President Alexander Johnston Cassatt, who envisioned a New York City terminal as a competitive advantage over other railroad lines, whose eastern termini sat west of the Hudson River, in New Jersey. For the grand New York City station, Cassatt commissioned architect Charles McKim, of McKim, Mead & White, the celebrated firm responsible for much of Manhattan's City Beautiful-era civic architecture. McKim's ambitious design drew on a wide range of Classical and Continental antecedents: Rome's St. Peter's Cathedral and the Baths of Caracalla, the Gare D'Orsay in Paris, and Berlin's Brandenburg gate, among others. Construction took all of six years, and was completed in 1910. Cassatt's bet on a station east of the Hudson proved astute; Pennsylvania Station would soon become both a hub for both regional commuters and long distance travelers. However, post-WWII shifts in mass transportation put a dent in rail travel. Declining ridership combined with significant maintenance costs led to the sale of the station's air rights, the first step toward eventual demolition. Despite protests from preservationists, including Action Group for Better Architecture in New York (AGBANY), demolition proceeded in 1963, two years after plans were first announced. Pennsylvania Station was best eulogized in a withering editorial by New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, published October 30, 1963: "Until the first blow fell no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Somehow someone would surely find a way to prevent it at the last minute—not-so-little Nell rescued by the hero—even while the promoters displayed the flashy renderings of the new sports arena and somewhat less than imperial commercial buildings to take its place. It's not easy to knock down nine acres of travertine and granite, 84 Doric columns, a vaulted concourse of extravagant, weighty grandeur, classical splendor modeled after royal Roman baths, rich detail in solid stone, architectural quality in precious materials that set the stamp of excellence on a city But it can be done. It can be done if the motivation is great enough, and it has been demonstrated that the profit motivation in this instance was great enough. Monumental problems almost as big as the building itself stood in the way of preservation; but it is the shame of New York, of its financial and cultural communities, its politicians, philanthropists and planners, and of the public as well, that no serious effort was made. A rich and powerful city, noted for its resources of brains, imagination and money, could not rise to the occasion. The final indictment is of the values of our society. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn't afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tin-horn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

With so many of us staying indoors these days, it is helpful to remember the glories of New York City’s public landscape, past and present. Here are a few examples to remind you of treasured sites we look forward to visiting again, appreciating in person, and sharing with others!

Pennsylvania Station interior New York’s original Penn Station, whose 1963 demolition rallied the nascent preservation movement in America, contained a series of Guastavino vaults supported by curving steel trusses and columns. George Collins, the Columbia University professor and architectural historian who later single-handedly saved the Guastavino Company archives from destruction, noted that this combination of thin tile vaults and metal trusses was probably unique—not just in New York, but in the world.

The New York Preservation Archive Project is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and celebrating the history of historic preservation in New York City. The Archive Project is devoted to celebrating neglected narratives of New York historic preservation using the archives that hold these stories. This collection includes a selection of historic sites that became flashpoints of the city's preservation movement(s). For more information, visit: www.nypap.org/phd-category/places/

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

Pennsylvania Station ca. 1940 This great concourse of steel and glass is one of the few reminders we have of a once practical and expressive design for railroad architecture. The precedent for such an enclosure is found in the trains sheds which were located over the tracks in many of the older terminals. Here, in this great station, it was particularly well suited to its use as a pedestrian concourse, giving a wonderful sense of openness and light. It may soon be demolished to make way for a remodeled station.