Keep an Eagle Eye Out for Penn Station Eagles

From 1910 until 1963, when New York actually had a Pennsylvania Station instead of a dingy 1960s subterranean rat warren beneath a hockey rink and office towers, twenty-two stone eagles stood guard over the McKim, Mead, and White masterpiece. The eagles themselves, along with almost all the other stone artwork on the station were the work of artist Adolph A. Weinman, who among other things created Civic Fame atop the Municipal Building and the Walking Liberty half dollar coin.

Today fourteen of the twenty-two eagles are known to still exist, with just three still in the city. (We suspect the remainder are probably landfill in the Meadowlands along with most of the rest if the station.) Two of the city eagles are easy to spot. You can find them ignobly perched on plinths in front of the Penn Plaza/Madison Square Garden complex on 7th Avenue. The third of the city eagles is a bit harder to find, sitting in a courtyard of a Cooper Union building at 3rd Avenue and St. Marks Place. You can see it through the fence on the 3rd Avenue side.

Three eagles have taken flight to Long Island where you can find two at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point and one a the Hicksville Long Island Rail Road station.

The greatest concentration of eagles winds up being in a rather ironic place, in the city where the plans for the destruction of their original perch were approved – Philadelphia. There, four eagles stand perched, as if they were the spoils of the sacking of a great city, on the corners of the Market Street bridge, right near the former Pennsylvania Railroad and current Amtrak station.

The other survivors are further dispersed with lone eagles roosting at Valley Forge Military Academy in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia, Vinalhaven, Maine, and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Photograph of a Penn Station Eagle at the Cooper Union by Triborough on flickr

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Toby von Meistersinger in Arts and Events, Miscellaneous on September 4, 2007 12:08 PM

Comments [rss]

walking liberty half dollar

This one is really one of the stunning post. And I really like half dollar information. And the coins are really looking just superb forever. And these are really looking so promising for my world coin collection. And the regarding information is really fantastic.

newpennstation

The eagles are a small consolation for the loss of the original station, but they do remain a symbol of what was. We have the chance to get Penn Station "Right the Second Time." The new Moynihan Station can be a grand replacement, and using the Farley Post Office it can augment the current station and create the expansion needed today and in the future.

other_islander

...spoils of the sacking of a great city.

ahem. perhaps philadelphia was just a litter quicker than new york to recognize the value of the past (although independence mall could call that into question).

btw, the philadelphia museum of art houses diana, the saint-gaudens wethervane that once graced the former madison square garden

guest

The destruction of Penn Station has been rightly called "the greatest act of civic vandalism in US history". To put up the disposable building that is MSG (they are constantly thinking of tearing it down and moving it) they destroyed something that they couldn't recreate. Instead, they left the city with the equivalent of a basement bus depot.

The best book on this whole sad story is "The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station" by Lorraine B. Diehl. "Lost New York" by Nathan Silver also tells the tale along with a lot of other torn down landmarks.

Reality Czech

Remember folks, it was the US Automobile and Oil companies that tore down the old Penn Station.

guest

A similarly ignominious fate occurred to the cast iron eagles that used to grace the roof of Grand Central. PBS' "History Detectives", ep. 9 of Season 5, did a piece on the fate of the iron eagles. Maybe they should do one on the fate of these stone eagles.