The Destruction of Penn Station

The New York Times Book Review, March 25, 2001 --David W. Dunlap
…ultimately, by allowing contemporary viewers to experience freshly that slow-motion tragedy, they illustrate why New Yorker’s sense of loss endures...


New York Magazine, April 9, 2001
…guaranteed to shock those who’ve only known the station’s undistinguished replacement. Peter Moore’s light-filled paeans to preservation…


The New York Times, May 20, 2001
…the loss of the old station was a factor is the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965.


The New Yorker, April 9, 2001
Curiously, his most bracing images record the early stages of destruction, when commuters were moving through unfazed…


Paris Photo, Summer 2001 --R.S.
The sequence and editing of photos…give[s] you a strong sense of something almost alive that is slowly dying.


Popular Photography, May 2001 --M.R.
...grand cathedral-like Pennsylvania Railroad Station was torn down…Moore documented that sad, historically controversial process on large-format black-and-white film.


Book Description
Opened to the public in 1910, McKim, Mead & White's Pennsylvania Station featured a dramatic vaulted glass ceiling over its expansive main concourse and was inspired in part by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, giving visitor and commuter alike an experience of grandeur in entering and leaving the city. The decision in 1962 to replace the old station and its subsequent demolition ultimately proved to be key moments in the birth of the historical preservation movement--a movement that came too late to save Penn Station itself. But during this period one might on any given day of the week, have seen Peter Moore in the station, carefully photographing the building and the process of its destruction, even as above his head--and above the heads of the 200, 000 commuters who transversed the station each day--cranes were beginning to take down what had been one of the grandest public buildings of the 20th century. Moore visited the Station again and again between 1962 and 1966 to document its architectural form as well as the drama of its ''unbuilding.'' The resulting photographs combine compositionally elegant images of architectural form and details with haunting pictures of glass and masonry stripped away from steel girders as the building is progressively demolished. "Moore's images are permeated with a sense of time and loss. There is a rhythm and flow to them as they unfold, from the arrested, classical quality of the still-intact station to the crescendo of the Dresden-like ruins."--Eric Nash Clothbound hardcover, 10 x 11 inches, 128 pages, 1 color and 140 duotone illustrations.


About the Author
Peter Moore (1932-1993) began his career as assistant to the great industrial photographer O. Winston Link in the 1950s and eventually became Senior Technical Editor of Modern Photography magazine from 1978-1989. But he was best known for his photojournalism covering startling avant-garde performances that took place beginning in the 1960s, such as Fluxus, happenings, and Judson Dance Theater. During more than 30 years of documenting these events Moore amassed an unparalleled archive of several hundred thousand images, selections of which have been published and exhibited internationally. His photographs of the 4-year demolition of New York's Pennsylvania Station, on the other hand, were unknown to the outside world during his lifetime. This book represents thier first publication.


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Powerfully composed and richly tonal, Moore's photographs are in one sense an appreciation of the undeniable bravura of the demolition. But ultimately, by allowing contemporary viewers to experience freshly that slow-motion tragedy, they illustrate why New Yorkers' sense of loss endures to this day.


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