Financial History Issue 126 (Summer 2018) | Page 10

THE TICKER  CONNEC TING TO COLLEC TIONS Constructing the Original Pennsylvania Station By Sarah Poole, Collections Manager the north, across the Harlem River. In June 1899, Alexander Cassatt became the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and his vision was to mod- ernize the American railroad system. He visited Paris in the summer of 1901 and was inspired by the year-old Gare d’Orsay, the world’s first electric rail terminal. He had visited the new terminal on the sug- gestion of Pennsylvania Railroad execu- tive Samuel Rea, who argued for electric railroad tunnels as early as 1892. Cassatt was convinced that electric tunnels were the answer to his railroad’s problem in New York and persuaded the company’s board of directors to undergo a massive project to construct the tunnels along with a brand new terminal. The company qui- etly started acquiring land for the project that Fall and announced the $40 million project to the public in December 1901. Construction on the tunnels began in 1903 and continued into 1910. The Museum of American Finance acquired Finance If you live or work in New York City and its surrounding areas, the tale of commuting woes is a familiar one. Train delays and cancellations due to electrical problems, broken rails and other system- atic failures are a near-daily occurrence for New York’s commuters who rely on NJ Transit, the Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak to travel into and out of the city through one of the world’s busiest train terminals: Pennsylvania Station. Known to most people simply as Penn Station, the terminal serves 430,000 trav- elers each weekday with more than 1,300 arrivals and departures on its 21 tracks. For comparison, New York’s other major rail station, Grand Central Station, serves 267,000 MTA-Metro North and Amtrak passengers per day on 43 active tracks. While the high volume is certainly prob- lematic, as minor issues can quickly com- pound into commuting nightmares, the most-blamed culprit for the state of affairs is the 108-year-old tunnel system that ser- vices the station. The original Penn Station and its tun- nels were built at a different time for a dif- ferent city. Prior to 1910, if you wanted to travel to New York City from New Jersey or Long Island, your train journey would terminate at either the Hudson River or East River, and you would have to board a ferry to continue on to Manhattan. Rail- road companies had attempted to con- struct rail tunnels and bridges to connect New Jersey and Long Island with Manhat- tan throughout the 1870s and 1880s, but those projects failed due to engineering challenges and financial difficulties. When the Pennsylvania Railroad (oper- ating in New Jersey) acquired the Long Island Rail Road in 1900, gaining direct access to New York City became a priority for the company. Its major competitor, the New York Central Railroad, controlled the only rail access to Manhattan, from Construction photograph showing the iron lining and concrete arch of the south tunnel into Pennsylvania Station, May 3, 1909. 8    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Summer 2018  | www.MoAF.org Grouting the iron lining of the south tunnel into Pennsylvania Station, May 12, 1909.