A rendering of ASTM’s proposed Eighth Avenue grand entrance to a redesigned Penn Station.
Courtesy of ASTM, PAU, and HOK
The Italian engineering firm ASTM has unveiled its full $6 billion plan to remake and modernize Penn Station while keeping Madison Square Garden in place.
ASTM’s plan, which it says would be financed by a $1 billion upfront investment coupled with federal grants and loans, would build on the existing proposals by the railroad agencies using Penn Station — the MTA, New Jersey Transit, and Amtrak — to construct a light-filled mid-block concourse on the site of the drab, cavernous, long-maligned station, which is the busiest in North America.
ASTM’s plan involves creating a new, stone-clad cubic structure to surround Madison Square Garden, which would allow for the construction of two new, sunlit train halls with 55-foot-high ceilings and a grand entrance on Eighth Avenue. The mid-block train hall between 31st and 33rd streets would boast 105-foot-high ceilings.
The firm claims its plan can be accomplished in just six years, faster and $1 billion cheaper than a competing proposal by the railroad agencies, while also keeping the World’s Most Famous Arena perched on the spot it’s occupied above the train terminal for decades.
“Our proposal envisions two main train halls — a soaring Eighth Avenue entrance and a light-filled mid-block hall — that together will restore the civic gravitas that has been absent since the 1963 demolition of McKim, Mead & White’s original edifice,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, the architect contracted by ASTM for the design. “Our new stone façade mirrors and reinterprets McKim’s masonry colonnade across Eighth Avenue at Moynihan Station, creating a great public outdoor room that brings the historical in conversation with the contemporary, all while prioritizing light and air, an improved public realm, a great mix of civic uses, and compatibility with planned rail and neighborhood growth.”
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