President Trump might be in the White House, but deep down those who know him can tell: he’s still the same boy from Queens with big dreams of molding the New York City skyline. And not just New York City. You’ve only to look at his January memorandum on “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” to see that Trump’s desire for the ambitious, big, and beautiful in action. He wants to turn America’s public buildings from drab, quasi-Soviet monuments into symbols of American greatness. And he should; too much of our infrastructure and civic architecture isn’t just broken and inefficient, but brutish. (RELATED: ‘On Budget, On Time’: Sean Duffy Says This Is How Trump Will Make Infrastructure Projects More Accountable)
Fortunately, there is a plan to fix this problem right in the heart of the president’s hometown. That plan? To rebuild the existing Penn Station. However, the plan’s scope is far bigger than that. It also calls for a new park and a grand train hall modeled after the original Penn Station. I and the others behind this project call it “Project Grand Penn.”
Such a plan is desperately overdue. Once upon a time, New York City had a train station worthy of the greatest city in America. Built in 1910, the original Penn Station was huge, confident and bold. Built in a classical style, it was a tribute to the greatness of America. Its sheer size made it sublime, inspiring, and at the same time, humble. It was home to the gods, closer to heaven than even New York’s tallest skyscrapers. Langston Hughes called it a bulwark for the soul.
That was then. Sadly, in 1964 it was torn down and thrown into the swamps of the Meadowlands in what was perhaps the greatest act of architectural vandalism in American history. It was replaced by the current underground Penn Station, which is a disgrace, much hated by the public, dangerous, inefficient, “Fit only for rats,” as one critic put it. Walking through its low, cramped passageways, you find yourself forced to elbow your way through a thicket of strangers. New York deserves better. And President Trump knows this, judging by the fact that his Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently announced that the federal government would be taking over the project of improving Penn Station.
That’s where Project Grand Penn comes in. Almost four years ago, I was approached by a group called the National Civic Art Society, an organization committed to recovering classical architecture. It was seeking funds to develop a plan to reconstruct the original Penn Station. My first thought was, “How wonderful.” My second thought was, “How unrealistic.”
First, you would have to move and rebuild Madison Square Garden. In the unlikely event you could do this, you would then have to convince real estate owners, railroads, and a long list of city, state, and federal government agencies, each with its own agenda. My head told me it was hopeless, and yet, for one reason or another, my heart had hope. Sometimes the sublime is priceless, and so I put together a team of transportation experts to see what they could come up with. The team is headed up by Alex Washburn, who is an award-winning architect who began his career working on the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorial renovations, as well as several classical new buildings in Washington, D.C. He is the founding president of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, which designed Moynihan Train Hall, the new Amtrak station located in the old classical post office just across from Grand Penn. In short, if anyone can fix Penn Station, he can. The result is the plan we have now.
All of this is to say that, when it comes to making Penn Station great again, we have the team. We have the plan. We have the will. All we need now is the consent of those with the power to make it happen. We need the president. And what better president than that boy from Queens, now the most powerful man in the world, who still sees an America – and a New York skyline – which deserves better than decades of a legacy of failure?
Tom Klingenstein is the chairman of the Claremont Institute, a public speaker, a writer, a philanthropist and a playwright.
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