This day (and yesterday) in Penn Station history...

In the course of conducting research for the show, it's pretty easy to find anniversary dates for something. With construction of Penn Station taking roughly ten years, and then it standing for another fifty-five, something can be found for nearly every date on the calendar. But as we ease back into post-Labor Day routines starting today, this is a week full of fun factoids. 

Today, September 8th is an anniversary of the LIRR extension in Penn Station The LIRR, owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad at the time, would be the first line extended into the station. While the station remained under construction around them, LIRR passengers boarded and disembarked in a cordoned off area. The first trip 115 years ago, would be the first of many to provide easy rail access to Manhattan that fueled suburban growth in Long Island and New Jersey in the first half of the 20th century. By the 1920s, two-thirds of Penn Station's traffic will come from the suburbs.

Jules Crow, Pennsylvania Station Interior, 1906. Watercolor, Ink and Graphite on Paper. New-York Historical Society, PR042, Mckim, Mead & White Collection

Yesterday, Labor Day Monday, remains a celebration of America's workers. As the the holiday came to be recognized federally in 1894 by unanimously passed legislation, it's passage followed the conclusion of the Pullman workers strike that crippled the railroads, resulted in 30 deaths and required federal intervention. While Labor Day had its origins in New York City in 1880s when 10,000 garment workers held a parade, rally and picnic, railroad workers are often symbolically linked with the Labor Day movement. 

T.W.U. Strike (1960)

Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries

More impressively, yesterday marked the 101st anniversary of the opening of the New York Post Office. At opening it was simply called Pennsylvania Terminal, and later renamed the Farley post office in 1982. Also designed by McKim, Mead & White, the postal building continued the Corinthian Colonnade of its railroad neighbor.  The famous inscription adorning the building: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is not the official motto of the United States Postal Service (it doesn't actually have one).  It was suggested by McKim, Mead & White staffer William Mitchell Kendall who borrowed from Herodotus' Histories description of Persian mounted couriers.

VIA Library of Congress

VIA The Museum of the City of NY

Weekly Wednesday Update: December 10, 2014

Photo by Ron Ziel 

The responses have been rolling in for the Norman McGrath prints. Remember, if you backed our Kickstarter at the $75 or above level and haven’t responded to my email, please do so by December 18th. If you need the email resent or checked off “No Gifts” but would like a print, please email me at justin@theeternalspaceplay.com. If you weren't a Kickstarter backer and would like to purchase a print, that's fair game too. Just email me and I'd be happy to get that set up for you. 

By the beginning of next we will have our brandy new Shop up and running on this website.  There you’ll be able to pick up some great holiday gifts for the architecture/rail/history/NYC fan in your life while helping to support our upcoming production.

Stay tuned! 

A profile on photographer Ron Ziel

As The Eternal Space has developed, we have been fortunate to stumble across huge collections of Penn Station photographs taken by many different photographers over the course of the station’s life as well as during its demolition.

Choices, choices, choices. Sure, there are hundreds of familiar photos of Penn Station available in the public domain. I am sure you may have seen the ones circulating on websites and blogs and appearing in articles about Penn Station. Notable New York Times photographers captured pivotal moments and Alfred Eisenstaedt covered wartime farewells in a 1943 Life Magazine piece. But from the beginning, it was our intention to make The Eternal Space different. We settled on five photographers, from varied walks of life, whose photographs offered unique perspectives and were often never published. With each photographer came a different life story, a different motivation and a different camera angle. Today, we offer the first hint at the story behind photographer, Ron Ziel.

We’ve spent countless hours on the phone with Ziel, who now resides in Tuscon, Arizona. His photographs of Penn’s demolition offered the perspective of the LIRR commuter. As an advertising executive and editor his daily commute continued while the building came down around him. As an avid train enthusiast, he felt that the opportunity to snap pictures was too great to miss.

His fondness for trains began earlier in his life as Captain in the U.S. Army and casual traveler. He travelled to 54 countries and amassed a person portfolio of over 25,000 photos. His love of trains and history motivated him to author and collaborate on over a dozen books on a variety of topics. His passion for rail preservation during rail travel’s decline led him to found the Long Island chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society.

And, Ziel collected everything from railroad ephemera to photographs taken by others.  Kickstarter backers will enjoy a replica of his original ticket for the LIRR ceremony train into Penn Station. As Ziel relocated to Tuscon, The Archives at the Queens Library purchased a portion of his collection. The Ron Ziel Image Collection at The Archives of the Queens Library today features 6,435 images by 31 photographers spanning the years of 1874-1996. Today these images are open for research to the public, without restrictions, at the Long Island Division of the Queens Library in Jamaica, Queens.