Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels

Anything about the Pennsylvania Railroad grabs my interest. When the biggest railroad undertakes construction of the biggest station in the biggest city in the USA, the subject swells on my radar. The auther covers the dreaming, the planning, the maneuvering and the unimaginable deployment of men and machines (and no doubt quite a few animals) that toiled so that Penn Station could arise. Not so widely known, and I have to include my self in this uninformed group before reading Conquering Gotham, is the fact that Penn Station never really succeeded. It failed to ignite a boom in Hell's Kitchen real estate that was predicted by its advocates, and for the final decade of its life was part of a (misguided) argument that held up the grimy monument as one of the causes of Hell's Kitchen's misfortunes. Much like the PRR's flagship Broadway Limited which was second to none in any aspect of First Class train travel, but a very distant second to the rival 20th Century Limited of the New York Central, Penn Station just wasn't as successful as it could or should have been. This in no way lets the short-sighted money people who caused Pennsylvania Station's shameful destruction off the hook. Thank you author Jonnes for bringing all this history to life.

The building of the tunnels and station is fascinating, as is the man who was the driving force behind it, Alexander Cassatt.

Excellent history covering the politics, culture and economic and technological dynamism of Gilded Age New York City, and, to some extent the U.S. as a whole. Lots of deep character exploration along with engineering and business detail. Reads like a novel with th a poignant ending. Highly recommended!

Making my first visit to New York and arriving via Amtrak, I was fascinated by Penn Station. Knowing what is there now is not what was there when (and loving the visit to NYC), I decided I needed to learn more about it.This is a fascinating story of engineering along with quite a bit of plain old ingenuity. The elements of the story - the tunnel, the station, the politics, the cronyism - all interlocked with New York at the turn of the last century is a tale of an amazing age of change. The station only lasted 50-some years, in some ways doomed from the beginning by the cars that were already running around on the streets at the time. The tunnels, however, are still there and serving magnificently.It's hard to imagine this all transpiring without the vision of Alexander Cassat, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad who made it all happen. After you read this, be sure to search the internet for the story of the station's demolition, it will surely sadden you to see it.

For a building I never saw, the old Penn Station is much on my mind, particularly when I see buildings in Charlotte imitate one or another aspect of the great station. But nobody is as audacious as architect Charles McKim was, nor as pioneering as the Pennsylvania Railroad executives who pressed to dig a tunnel under the river to bring passengers directly to Manhattan without having to take a ferry from New Jersey. What an achievement! It is a tragedy that we don't have McKim's massive monument to celebrate it with.

The story in interesting. It represents the combined challenges of impossible engineering and impossible politics. Since both these subjects involve individuals and since so many problems were finally solved it stays interesting. The author's prose, however, did not do so well. There are so many superlatives with so many really lengthy sentences, it just wore me out.It feels "flowery" and not substantial.Read it but skim past the noise.

There is so much more that could have been included. This dwells more on the problems that Alexander Cassatt, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, had with NYC politicos and their vested interests. It is too bad that this history of Penn Station stops short of the 21st century. It is too bad that CG does not go into how the Hudson River tubes evolved into predominantly providing commuter access for NJTransit into the now rat-like Penn Station that resulted from demo. Too bad that CG does not discuss the cornball scheme that would have resulted in a separate station to serve NJTransit known as the "tunnel to Macy's basement". Too bad that the author does not go into the probability that one or both tubes may be lost due to overuse, deferred maintenance and damage resulting from the Hurricane Sandy flooding. That circumstance was the result of a fiscal decision, wherein an additional two tubes under the Hudson, had they been constructed, would have greatly eased the nightmare that must now be faced...unless we get lucky and two new tunnels SERVING EXISTING PENN STATION can be constructed before the existing ones crumble. What was once a magnificent landmark was knocked down and replaced with an architectural monstrosity we know as the current Madison Square Garden. The difficulties of constructing all six tubes (which should have been eight) is described well.

The Pennsylvania Railroad expansion east of the Hudson River into New York and New England is an intriguing story about how mega-projects got done at the beginning of the 20th Century. Heroes and scoundrels abound. Among the heros are Alexander Cassatt and Samuel Rea of the PRR and the hundreds of sandhogs who mined thousands of feet of tunnels in compressed air under the Hudson and East Rivers. Nice to read a book where the heroes are engineers and miners not vampires and witches. It was also mind expanding for this old liberal to actually read a story of a major corporation doing the right thing for both America , its stockholders and its workers. I guess there is always an exception to the rule.

A fascinating read and exploration of the trials and tribulations of the engineers and entrepreneurs who had to take on the massive problem of linking the mainland to Manhattan and Long Island. The flavour of the rough and tumble of American politics and life in New York City comes through strongly. Will appeal to historians, engineers, scientists, architects and lovers of New York City

a very detailed analysis of the construction of the Pennsylvannia Railroad's station and the building of the tunnels that were needed to access the station in New York.There is also quite a lot of information on the politics of the USA at the time and what most legislators thought of the building of the tunnels into Manhattan

Highly recomended