Our tour of the Remnants of Penn Station has been one of those unexpected hits. When we first launched it in partnership with the play The Eternal Space based on one of our articles, we knew that as city and architecture buffs, we’d be the types of people who might spend two hours on a Sunday exploring the most hated station in the city, if not the country. We’ve been honored and humbled that since February we’ve hosted hundreds of likeminded explorers on this tour–and we ourselves keep discovering new remnants of the original Pennsylvania Station each time we visit.
As reviled as the station may be, its complex and labyrinth nature tells so much of how the original was demolished and the new one built, and why there’s so much left to see for architectural hunters like yourselves. As plans for a new Penn Station are underway, awareness of these remnants will be the only thing that may save the original station from a second destruction.
After more than a year of readings (like at the Center for Architecture), and a successful Kickstarter campaign, the play The Eternal Space will have a run of 25 performances at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row in New York City from November 13 to December 6, 2015. In celebration, we’ve announced tour dates of the Remnants of Penn Station through December. Our October tour will be particularly special, coinciding with the date when demolition commenced.
The Remnants of Penn Station are led by Justin Rivers, playwright of The Eternal Space, using some never before seen photographs of Penn Station sourced from the play and Tamara Agins from the NYC Department of City Planning, who addresses the present and future plans for the station.
