Pennsylvania Station (Baltimore)

For other stations with the title Pennsylvania Station, see Pennsylvania Station.

Pennsylvania Station (generally referred to as Penn Station) is the main train station in Baltimore, Maryland. Designed by New York architect Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison (1872–1938), it was constructed in 1911 in the Beaux-Arts style of architecture for the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is located at 1515 N. Charles Street, on a raised "island" of sorts between two open trenches, one for the Jones Falls Expressway and the other the tracks of the Northeast Corridor. The Mount Vernon neighborhood lies to the south, and Station North is to the north. Penn Station is about a mile and a half north of downtown and the Inner Harbor. The station was originally known as Union Station (because it was served by both Pennsylvania Railroad and Western Maryland Railway), but was renamed to match other Pennsylvania Stations in 1928.

Both the northern and southern Northeast Corridor (NEC) approaches into the station are tunneled. The two-track Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel (B&P Tunnel), which opened in 1873, constitutes the southern approach. At 7,660 feet (about 1.5 miles) in length, it is one of the worst bottlenecks on the NEC since the maximum speeds for trains through the tunnel is only 30 mph. The northern approach for Penn Station is carried through the Union Tunnel, which has a single-track bore and a double-track bore. The Union Tunnel was opened in 1873 and has been upgraded since, and is not as bad a chokepoint as the B&P tunnel, since it has two bores and lacks the sharp curves and steep grades that its opposite to the south has.

Penn Station is the eighth busiest rail station in the United States by number of passengers served.

History

Pennsylvania Station opened on September 15, 1911. It is the third railroad depot on its North Charles Street site. The first one was a wooden structure built by the Northern Central Railway that began operating in 1873. This was replaced in 1886 by the Charles Street Union Station, which featured a three-story brick building situated below street level with a sloping driveway that led to its entrance and a train shed that measured 76 by 360 feet (23.16 by 109.73 meters). ^[3]

The old station was demolished in January 1910.

Current and prior services

Penn Station is served by Amtrak, MARC, and the Maryland Transit Administration's light rail system. The station is the north terminus of the Light Rail's Penn-Camden shuttle, connecting the Mount Vernon neighborhood with downtown; the southern terminus is the Baltimore's Camden Station. MARC offers service between Washington, DC and Perryville, MD. Amtrak Regional trains from Penn Station serve destinations along the Northeast Corridor and in Virginia between Boston, and Newport News, VA, including New York, Philadelphia, Wilmington, DE, Washington, and Richmond. Other long distance trains from the station serve:

• St. Albans, Vermont
• Charlottesville, Virginia
• Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina
• Atlanta, Georgia
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Miami, Florida
• Huntington, West Virginia
• Cincinnati, Ohio
• Indianapolis, Indiana
• Chicago, Illinois

Of the six Maryland stations served by Amtrak, Baltimore was the busiest in FY2010, boarding or detraining an average of approximately 2500 passengers daily.^[1]

Previous Amtrak trains in the 1970s and 1980s also offered service to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, St. Louis, and Atlantic City, New Jersey. However, these services have since been discontinued over the past 30 years.

Prior to Amtrak's creation on May 1, 1971, Penn Station served as the main Baltimore station for its original owner, the Pennsylvania Railroad, though passenger trains of the Western Maryland Railway also used Penn Station as well. Until the late-1960s, the Pennsylvania Railroad also operated long-distance trains over its historic Northern Central Railway line from Penn Station to Harrisburg and beyond, such as "The General" to Chicago, the "Spirit of St. Louis" to its Missouri namesake, and the "Buffalo Day Express" and overnight "Northern Express" between Washington, DC, and Buffalo, New York. As late as 1956, this route also hosted the "Liberty Limited" to Chicago and the "Dominion Limited" to Toronto, Canada. The Baltimore Light Rail now operates over much of the Northern Central Railway's right of way in Baltimore and Baltimore County; however, the spur connecting Penn Station to this right of way is not the route originally taken by Northern Central trains. Baltimore Light Rail service began in 1997.

As part of the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project, the station was restored to its 1911 appearance in 1984.^[4]

The station's use as a Western Maryland station stop allowed passengers from Penn Station to ride directly to various Maryland towns such as Westminster, Hagerstown, and Cumberland. Passenger service on the Western Maryland ended in 1958.

Male/Female sculpture controversy

In 2004, the City of Baltimore, through its public arts program, commissioned noted sculptor Jonathan Borofsky to create a sculpture as the centerpiece of a re-designed plaza in front of Penn Station. His work, a 51-foot (15.5 m)-tall aluminum statue entitled Male/Female, has generated considerable controversy ever since. Its defenders cite the contemporary imagery and artistic expression as complementing an urban landscape, while opponents criticize what they decry as a clash with Penn Station's Beaux-Arts architecture, detracting from its classic lines.

As The Baltimore Sun editorialized,^[5]

"Could this explain why defenders of "Male/Female", the sculpture in front of Penn Station, get so irritable? That large piece of quadrupedal artwork is out there all on its own, unclothed of commemorative armor that might deflect public criticism – unless you want to think of it as a memorial to the war between the sexes, but that's an issue that people tend to have a lot of different and strongly held opinions about anyway. No, "Male/Female" gets a lot of attention strictly on its artistic merits, and much of it isn't very positive, especially concerning its setting in front of the Beaux–Arts railroad station. This drives its proponents up the wall."

Three years later, Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks ridiculed the artwork, writing on August 26, 2007, "Patrons of art here paid $750,000 for a 51-foot sculpture...that looks like Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still. I look at it and want to say: 'Klaatu barada nikto!' It's the first thing visitors see when they walk out of the train station."^[6] Another Sun reporter, commenting in July 2008 on what she described as the "stormy relationship" between Baltimore and public art, said "People's hate for Penn Station's behemoth Male/Female sculpture has burned for years."^[7]

Proposed hotel and remodel

In March 2006, Amtrak was reported to be in negotiations with an unnamed developer to build a 72-room hotel on three unused floors of Penn Station, possibly also including additional retail space on the station's main floor. If Amtrak were to build a hotel at Penn Station, it would be a first for any Amtrak station in the United States.^[8]

On May 29, 2009, Amtrak announced it had reached an agreement for a 77-room hotel, to be called The Inn at Penn Station, on the station's top three floors.^[9]

Checkers speech

During what became known as the Checkers speech, on September 23, 1952, Richard Nixon, then a U.S. Senator from California and the Republican Party's nominee for Vice President, cited Penn Station as the place where a package was waiting for him, containing a cocker spaniel dog his daughter Tricia would name "Checkers." Nixon erred in naming the station, using its former name, calling it "Union Station in Baltimore."

References

External links

• Amtrak – Stations – Baltimore Pennsylvania Station
• Baltimore Penn(Amtrak-MARC-BLR) Station (USA RailGuide -- TrainWeb)
• Station Building from Google Maps Street View