Old Penn Station: No Source Ignored

As mentioned previously, it's difficult to model a building that doesn't exist. Plans and photos help, but don't always give the complete picture.

I read about some films that Lorraine B. Diehl, author of "The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station" selected as having footage of the original Penn Station.

One of the films was Stranger on a Train. Fortunately this is one of NetFlix's "Watch Now" selections, so I fired up my browser and watched the film.

At 1:27:13 (h:mm:ss) into the film, the protagonist jumps into a taxi in New York and commands to the driver "Penn Station".

For about 70 seconds we see Penn Station in its 1950 glory, including footage of one of the carriage ways, a glimpse of the arcade, the main waiting room, and even a little bit of the concourse through a window.

(P.S. I tried to do some screen captures from the Video of Penn, but I wasn't successful and it started getting late. If I find a workaround I'll update the post with the captures.

Wow, the Scale!

I'm several hours into the model now and I'm shocked over and over at the pure scale of the building. I used the blueprint drawings for the major dimensions, but occasionally I have to eyeball a building element. Whenever I do so, I'll guess, say 3 feet, and then I measure it out in the model. It is never large enough. Something that would be 3 feet in the houses that I normally model would be right, but for a similarly proportioned item in Penn I have magnify by 3-4 orders of magnitude!

One saving grace of the design is the repetition and symmetry. I have lots of recursive and mirrored structures (groups and components), which keeps the model smaller and helps the model perform. Here is a screen shot so far:

Chasing the Ghost of Penn Station

Wow, I should have learned from this abandoned model that modeling something that no longer exists is difficult. And this building has been gone for over 40 years!

When I worked on the Tappan Zee Model it also required some significant research, but I found what I needed on the Internet.
However, despite finding some useful resources online, I wasn't able to get any of the key measurements I needed for my Penn Station project.

Fortunately I had plans to be in New York city, so I would actually have to do research in a book! I took a trip to the New York Public Library, another NYC landmark and Beaux Art beauty.




In room 300, the Art & Architecture Reading Room, I found a book of Penn Station plans that was actually published by the architect, McKim, Mead, and White. It was very exciting to get the exact information I would need to accurately model Penn Station completely to scale.

My New Mission

I've spent a lot of time New York City, and as someone who has an interest in architecture, I was quite surprised to find out about an absolutely classic building that I never new existed. Of course I have the excuse that it was destroyed many years before my birth.

I was made aware of this building when looking for the New York sports stadium, Madison Square Garden, in the 3d Warehouse. I saw that, despite being a fine model, it had several 'one star' ratings. The explanation for these low scores (unfairly to the modeler) was that the current MSG was a ugly and hated replacement for the beautiful Beaux Arts building that was the original train station at the location.



Upon reading the history, outlined in greater detail here, (an informative site with an unfortunately bad design) I was then shocked that this original building is not represented in the 3d Warehouse despite it's iconic status.

To me the most appealing aspect of the design is the experience related in arriving into Manhattan by train, "like a king" whereas now the experience is more like entering "as a rat". Since I specialize in modeling interiors, I'm going to attempt to model this former building so I can experience that king like entrance virtually.