Return to grandeurNew York's Penn Station to move out of the basement and into the post officeMarch 6, 1998Web posted at: 5:12 p.m. EST (2212 GMT) NEW YORK (CNN) -- "One entered the city like a god," architectural historian Vincent Scully once wrote of New York's opulent Pennsylvania Station. "One scuttles in now like a rat." Scully made that observation after what New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "the great act of vandalism in the history of the city": the 1963 demolition of the building to make way for an office tower and Madison Square Garden. The demolition erased a magnificent structure from New York's streetscapes. The building's sheer size -- two city blocks of pink granite towering over the station's travelers -- made it a monumental gateway to the city. From the station's arcade lined with shops reminiscent of those in Naples and Milan to its main waiting area -- modeled after Roman baths and displaying a 150-foot (45-meter) vaulted ceiling -- Penn Station said "Welcome to New York" in a way no other entry-point could. But the train shed, with its metal and glass vaulted ceiling filtering light through a glass and cement floor to the tracks below, is gone. The tracks still run below the site, beneath the arena that has seen world championship sporting events and dog shows, and world class concerts and exhibits. But Amtrak's busiest train station is fast running out of room. A half million travelers from Amtrak's northeast line and two commuter railways move beneath the streets every day -- and it's just not the kind of introduction New York wants its visitors to have. As luck would have it, just across the street -- and directly above the train tracks -- sits New York's main post office, designed by the same architects (McKim, Mead & White), and in the same style, as the old station. And after years of negotiation, the U.S. Postal Service has agreed to give up part of the James Farley Post Office Building to relocate -- and perhaps re-create -- the elegant Penn Station. "I didn't know whether it was ever going to happen, " said Moynihan after President Clinton announced earlier this week that an agreement was reached.
A near-perfect matchThe fit is a good one. Both the 1910 Penn Station and the 1914 post office sported grand, elegant entrances -- the station with a line of Doric columns along one side, and the post office with a line of Corinthian columns. The postal service's famous motto -- "Neither snow nor rain ... " is engraved across the front of the Farley building. The new station's centerpiece: the huge, sky-lit central court, now a workspace for letter carriers, will be an ornate public hall leading to the train platforms. The renovation project is expected to cost $315 million, and Moynihan predicted that the main concourse will be operational in five years. "I can't quite reproduce the sense of New Yorkers in 1963 when we looked up and this had happened," Moynihan said. "What had we done or allowed to be done?" The Penn Station Redevelopment Corporation has put together the package that will fund the renovation from federal, state, city and private monies. But some complain that such a project should not be undertaken with federal funds at all -- that the city of New York should bear the brunt of righting a wrong it inflicted on itself. "If local citizens want to pony up the money to right this wrong, they should put up the tax dollars," said Scott Hodge of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "They should not come begging to Washington to do it." Regardless, Penn Station's supporters were jubilant with the news that the long-awaited plans to restore the building could now get underway. And perhaps soon, visitors who ride the rails to New York will once again enter "like a god." CNN Correspondent Mary Ann McGann and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 
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