The Pennsylvania Station of 1910, the station New York pulled down from October 1963, raised again as the census hall of the New Yorkers. You come in off Seventh Avenue through the Doric colonnade and a row of brass turnstiles, down the arcade and the grand stair into the travertine waiting room under its coffered vault, where light falls through the lunettes on the side the real sun is on. Past the census desk the hall breaks: one side intact, the other half demolished under a swinging ball, and beyond it the steel and glass concourse at night, drawn in dots. Stand still before any work and it comes apart into colour; give your wallet or name at the desk and a light finds yours.
Designed by McKim, Mead and White and opened to all its trains on November 27, 1910, the station's main waiting room was inspired by the Roman baths of Caracalla, Diocletian and Titus, 314 feet 4 inches long, 108 feet 8 inches wide and 150 feet tall, with lower walls of travertine from the Campagna, the first major American building to use the stone. Demolition of the station house began on October 28, 1963 and was finished in 1966; much of it was dumped in the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Source · Pennsylvania Station (1910 to 1963), Wikipedia ↗
The Seventh Avenue colonnade in pink granite with the clock and the Day and Night groups over the door, two granite eagles, brass turnstiles, the shopping arcade with its newsstand and shoeshine stand, the grand stair, the travertine waiting room with twelve giant columns, a coffered barrel vault, six lunettes and two thermal windows, velvet ropes and oak benches, the marble census desk with its open ledger, the 1963 seam with broken column drums, rubble, bare steel and a wrecking ball, and the dithered steel and glass concourse with freestanding gallery walls and a baggage wagon. Mood: travertine, steel and glass, and the seam where it came down. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.