Pennsylvania Plaza
Pennsylvania Plaza is the office, entertainment and hotel complex occupying and near the site of Pennsylvania Station, between 31st and 34th streets and Seventh and Eighth avenues in New York City.
It includes the current Madison Square Garden and its Theater, opened in 1968; the current below-ground Pennsylvania Station; and the One Pennsylvania Plaza and Two Pennsylvania Plaza office buildings.
Other buildings around the complex use the Pennsylvania Plaza name as an alternate address, such as the 5 Penn Plaza office building on Eighth Avenue, to the northwest; the Pennsylvania Building at 225 West 34th Street, north of the station; and the Hotel Pennsylvania at 401 Seventh Avenue, east of the station. The numbering of the Penn Plaza addresses around the area does not follow a consistent pattern.
The Penn Plaza complex remains one of the most controversial in New York City history because it involved the destruction, beginning in 1963, of the original McKim, Mead and White-designed Penn Station, a revered piece of New York architecture. Its replacements were what architects and civic purists regard as mediocre office and entertainment structures.
The demolition of the first Penn Station led to the city's landmarks preservation movement and helped save another landmark of railway architecture, Grand Central Terminal.
With the sports arena and railroad station at its hub and 34th Street retailers nearing the complex, Pennsylvania Plaza remains one of the busier transportation, business and retailing neighborhoods in Manhattan.Tenants