The Pennsylvania Station in New York
Is like some vast basilica of old
That towers above the terror of the dark
As bulwark and protection to the soul.
—Langston Hughes

Through it one entered the city like a god . . . . One scuttles in now like a rat.
—Vincent Scully

It is the easiest thing in the world to convince someone that Penn Station should be rebuilt. All it takes is a look at a photograph of the original station and then a look at Penn Station today. The subterranean warren huddled under Madison Square Garden is one of the most disagreeable public spaces in New York, or in any major Western city. The public usually becomes inured to bad design, through a combination of familiarity and the inability to imagine something better, but the photographs of Penn Station in all its Roman glory are a constant reminder that it does not have to be this way.

Incompetent design is everywhere, of course, but today’s Penn Station represents something far worse. Its humid unpleasantness seems too thoroughgoing and systematic to be accidental; something so uniformly nasty can only be the result of deliberate design. And such was the case. When the reeling Pennsylvania Railroad tried to delay its inevitable bankruptcy in 1963 by selling off its air rights, it lowered ceiling heights to the physically acceptable minimum—which turns out to be rather below the psychologically acceptable minimum.

Today’s Penn Station represents