American Experience (TV Series) The Rise and Fall of Penn Station (2014) User Reviews

Kind of sad.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 17 October 2015]

This show is about the monumental creation of Penn Station...the original Penn Station. Today there still is a Penn Station but it's a small and unimpressive space housed beneath Madison Square Gardens. Back in the early 1900s, it was a massive facility created by the Pennsylvania Railroad and which presented HUGE challenges--such as the creation of tunnels under the East River and Hudson River. The difficulty for the so-called 'sand hogs' in building it and the death toll is sad but fascinating. The problems digging these tunnels was similar to difficulties putting in the supports for the Brookly Bridge about half a century earlier--the bends as well as blowouts when the river came pouring into the tunnels. It all makes for an interesting piece but it's also anticlimactic since the station, in its original form, only lasted a few decades. Still, the show is very well made and fascinating.