On a drizzly Monday morning in October of 1963, the jackhammers arrived piercing the pink granite of New York City’s Pennsylvania Station and the monumental act of vandalism began, writes Lorraine Diehl, author of “The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station.”
Revisit the vanished station while you step back into McKim, Mead & White’s lost masterpiece with Lorraine Diehl at 2 p.m., September 18 as part of Heights and Hill Community Center’s “Speaker Series for Seniors.”
Walk through the cathedral-like arcade into the Main Waiting Room reminiscent of the Baths of Caracalla and into the Concourse, the station’s dramatic steel and glass train shed. Through rare vintage photographs, Diehl will bring New York City’s vanished railroad station to life.
Sponsored by Heights and Hill Community Council, the talk is free and open to all seniors. It will be held at the Brooklyn Historical Society located at 128 Pierrepont Street at Clinton Street.
In addition to “The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station,” which has its own cult following and has remained in print for nearly 20 years, Diehl has written about the subways of New York, the first black slaves in Manhattan, the ghosts of Ellis Island and about James Walker, New York’s most flamboyant mayor.
Diehl wrote a weekly feature for the “New York Daily News” called “Secret City,” which directed readers to the city’s treasures, and also co-authored “The Automat,” a recounting of the phenomenon that revolutionized the way we ate.
For more, call 718-596-8789.
