![]() ![]() Federal, state and city officials are lining up behind a public-private $315 million plan to convert part of the post office into a monumental reincarnation of the late, great train station that was based on the Baths of the Emperor Caracalla in Rome. A 35-year season of lament over the flattening of Pennsylvania Station, along with endless carping over the cramped replacement station that squats beneath Madison Square Garden, is drawing to a close. The senior senator from New York is on the brink of getting his way. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), who for more than four years has angled for federal funds, twisted President Clinton's arm and enlisted former staff members to infiltrate and advance the cause of a reborn station. It is a remarkable serendipity that we should have a second chance to recreate it," said Sen. "It was an act of vandalism to destroy Pennsylvania Station. Politicians and architects agree that its conversion to a glorious train station would be as easy as pie. ![]() Built when trains carried most of the mail, the post office sits above Amtrak rail tracks and passenger platforms. ![]() It has skylights in places where the old station had skylights. What is more, the two-block-square post office almost exactly matches the dimensions of the old station. That landmark building happens to have been designed by the same architecture firm that designed Pennsylvania Station. It is behind the Corinthian columns of the cavernous General Post Office. The crime was the 1963 demolition of Pennsylvania Station, a soaring temple of rail transport that novelist Thomas Wolfe lovingly described as "murmurous with the immense and distant sound of time." The happy ending can be found just across Eighth Avenue. Across the street from one of the most heinous architectural crimes of the 20th century looms a chance for a storybook ending. ![]()
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