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| Protesters in front of Pennsylvania Station on Aug. 2, 1962. Photo: Eddie Hausner/The New York Times |
Fifty years ago today, the preservation movement was effectively born. On August 2nd, 1962, before Pennsylvania Station, New Yorkers rallied to save a threatened architectural icon.
Though the the battle was lost (Penn Station was demolished in 1963) the war was not! The rally to save Penn Station drew attention to the urgent need for a formal regulatory process by which our city's architectural resources would be protected.
And thus was born the Landmarks Law and the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Today, another McKim, Mead & White-deigned icon is at risk! The firm is also responsible for the monumental the IRT Powerhouse.
But like Penn Station before, the building's lack of protection means it is constantly at risk of inappropriate
modifications and, worse still, demolition.
TAKE ACTION! Help us ensure the Powerhouse does not fall victim to the save fate as Penn Station.
The architects Peter Samton and Diana Goldstein can tell you exactly where they were a half century ago, at 5 p.m. on Aug. 2, 1962: out on Seventh Avenue, tilting at windmills.
Pennsylvania Station, the McKim, Mead & White masterpiece, was doomed. They knew it. But they weren’t going to let it go down undefended. With Norval White, Jordan Gruzen, Elliott Willensky and others, they assembled an impromptu resistance brigade known as Agbany, for Action Group for Better Architecture in New York.
On that 86-degree summer evening
50 years ago, commuters were greeted by the sight of more than 100
buttoned-down and white-gloved protesters marching around the colossal
colonnade at the station’s entrance.
“Save Penn Station,” their signs said, in nicely formed letters. (Architects. Of course.) “Don’t Sell Our City Short.” “Save Our Heritage.” “Action Not Apathy.”
Philip
Johnson was impeccably present, in the company of the peerless
Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, who
would soon be its president. There was Aline B. Saarinen, the widow of
Eero Saarinen, who had been until 1959 an associate art critic at The
New York Times. Agbany counted Eleanor Roosevelt, Stewart Alsop, Jane
Jacobs and Norman Mailer among its supporters, along with many of the
most respected names in architecture and architectural criticism ...
For the full article by David Dunlap, click here.
