And the crappy stuff built in their place. See them here.
That’s an excellent illustration of the loss of classy architecture today. To knock down beauty for a vacant lot – awful.
They (the infamous “they”) don’t always succeed, though. Granted that it’s a courthouse and wedding reception site now, and the train stops at a dismal latter-day Amtrak station a couple miles away, at least the building remains.
Oy vey… tell me, at the stroke of midnight gargoyles, werewolves and vampires come out from that building, right?
If you want barbarism on a truly horrible scale, think of one of the largest and oldest and grandest railway stations in the world.
This was Euston station, constructed in 1836 it was a statement of early Victorian intent, the Euston Arch was a famous landmark destroyed by cultural dolts.
I doubt that anyone actually believed the philistines at British Rail would actually do it, or there would have been amuch stronger campaign to save it.
As an act of railway vandalism, it really must be very near, or right at the top of the pile.
These brutish nasty little men also intended to demolish the magnificent St Pancras, which was shamefully left to decay for almost 30 years, and it took a huge campaign to have this magnificent structure restored, it seems incredible that this, one of the finest railway buildings in the enitre world would be left in such a parlous state for so long.
Just look at the restored work, and wonder about the sad little grey men with no souls and only swinging bricks in place of their hearts.
Tragedies all, yes. Still, remember the context. Those buildings that we now see as representing grandeur and beauty didn’t always. At one point, they were often seen as archaic, cramped, and useful only for a transportation scheme that had to be replaced with modern automobiles.
The demolitions described in the page for the most part occurred during the Urban Renewal craze, that resulted in the clearing of many more buildings than railroad stations. The antiques that were getting in the way of Progress had to be eliminated, and the ones that weren’t could be safely abandoned until a better use came along. Their replacements, that we now see as cheap and ugly, used to be thought modern and efficient, representing the future that visionaries like Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes and Philip Johnson could foresee.
Regarding the Euston Arch, this month’s Modern Railways magazine is reporting that several large blocks of masonry from the arch have been found at the bottom of a canal in east London and have been handed over to the Euston Arch Trust. The search goes on for the rest of the structure.
Large portions of the destroyed Pennsylvania Station were dumped in the Meadowlands swamps, where apparently large chunks of its 84 Doric columns can be seen today if you know where to look.
That makes me think of what one history prof told us about after the fall of Rome. For years, maybe centuries, people would cart off some of the old buildings to incorporate into their hovels. Similarly, I guess you could go out and take some of those Doric columns.