5. There Used to be an Underground Passageway to Herald Square
The original station contained many corridors that once connected it to nearby destinations such as the New Yorker Hotel and other subway stations. The most famous of these lost passageways was the Gimbels Passageway which stretched out over 800 feet under 33rd Street, connecting Penn Station’s 7th Avenue subway lines to the 6th Avenue lines accessible at the Herald Square Station under the former Gimbels Department Store.
The Hilton Passageway, which still exists in part, used to connect the 1,2,3 trains in Penn Station to the Hotel Pennsylvania. Today, it serves as a corridor that connects the lower Amtrak concourse, the Long Island Rail Road, and New Jersey Transit to the 1,2,3 trains. It is now blocked off by bricks – you can see the original opening by the change in white bricks along the wall. Over the course of renovations, another passageway was revealed which once led from the LIRR concourse to IRT or the 1,2, and 3 trains as they are known today. Boarded up in the 1980s, the passageway featured Guastavino tile.