International studio (41.1910)

The Pennsylvania Railroad Station

Considerations of sociology and "civics" can
scarcely be kept from intruding themselves in the
contemplation of such an enormous scheme as this,
even when one's business is only with the architec-
tural result. The opportunity the great new station
offered was very tempting to an architect, particu-
larly tempting to a "classic" architect. For the
natural outcome of the problem of a railroad station
is a building very low in proportion to its area, an
"anti-skyscraper," let us say. The station is but a
place of approach and departure for the passengers
who are taking or leaving the trains, a place of
shelter and circulation, a place of ample exits and
entrances. An extraneous feature, a clock tower or
what not, must be introduced if it be deemed desir-
able to signalize the building by giving it height.
True, a fringe and frontage of "office building" for
the corporate uses of the road may be added, as in
the Broad Street Station of the Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, as in the old Grand Central in New
York. But these uses are irrelevant to the primary
purpose of the place as a centripetal " concourse" of
outgoing passengers, a centrifugal departure of in-
coming. These subordinate and incidental uses,
one finds, are accommodated in the western and
least conspicuous front of the new station, where one
also finds with some surprise that the height else-
where comprised within the limits of a not very ex-
travagant "order" suffices for the inclusion of three
practicable stories and a basement, the order being
on this front subdued to a row of unobtrusive pilas-
ters. At the center of the northern and southern
fronts it asserts itself in a colonnade of some four-
teen columns, while the eastern front, the " architec-
turesque" front, is all colonnade, a projecting hexa-
style portico at the center and a still more projecting
tetra style portico at each end, including and fram-
ing an octostyle colonnade in the curtain wall. No one
who knows the late Charles F. McKim's design for
the Lincoln monument, which was projected as a
terminal and conspicuous feature in its author's
extension of L'Enfant's plan of Washington, and
which was merely a series of colonnades, a perip-
teral temple without a cella, can help conjecturing
that the scheme of the exterior of the new station
was also Mr. McKim's. The effect of the colon-
nades, on this scale, greater in extent than the Hypo-
style Hall of Karnac, in this material, an excellent
pink granite, and with this detail in design and in
execution everywhere admirable, cannot fail of
great impressiveness. The sparing ornament, al-
most confined to the carving of the central portico
on'each of the three important fronts, perfect in
scale and adjustment, does something to enliven

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the monotony which, it must be owned, is the defect
of the quality of impressiveness that is imparted by
the colonnades. Perhaps some day the enliven-
ment may be carried further by quadrigae, say, over
the central porticoes, by sculpture in the pediments
of the eastern front. It seems to be in no danger of
being carried too far. Meanwhile the architectural
devices to relieve the monotony are hardly success-
ful. The effectiveness of a colonnade being in pro-
portion to its length, any interruption of its series
and uniformity is in danger of costing more than it
comes to. Such an interruption is the wider spac-
ing of the columns of the porticoes at the center. A
still more questionable interruption is the advancing
of the terminal pavilions on the east front, not only
beyond the plane of the curtain walls, but beyond
the plane of the central portico, and the crowning of
them with pediments which appear here for the only
time in the entire building. It seems that an echo
at the ends of the central feature would have been
more effective, as well as more congruous. Never-
theless, one has to repeat, the effectiveness is very
great, and not less because the "order" is quite the
simplest of all that Roman antiquity has bequeathed
to us. "Roman doric" it is officially called, but
"Tuscan" would be more accurate, seeing that the
Roman Doric, with all its severity, at least did not
renounce, as the order here employed renounces, the
adornment of triglyphs. But this extreme simplic-
ity promotes the impressiveness of the exterior by
promoting its expressiveness. It is an expression
rather Egyptian than either Greek or Roman, as
being that of a wall which is simply a massive screen
or enclosure of hypaethral inner courts.

The specific character of the exterior is far from
being that of the interior, but, just as those who
know Mr. McKim's design, which, indeed, was but
a sketch, for the Lincoln monument, must assume
for him the authorship of the outside of the new sta-
tion, so those who remember his Agricultural Build-
ing at Chicago and value it, as many do, above any
of its fellows of the Court of Honor, will incline to
attribute the waiting room of the station to his in-
spiration. For, in truth, this seems to be an at-
tempt to furnish not its own exterior, but the exte-
rior of the Agricultural Building with an appropri-
ate interior, the actual interior of Chicago having
been a mere framework of modern engineering in
metal. The exterior motive of the Agricultural
Building is the interior motive of the waiting room
of the Pennsylvania Station. It is the motive of the
great hall of the Baths of Caracalla, at least in Viol-
let-le-Duc's restoration, which may be said to be
"standard." The emerging central mass indicates