The ghost of New York’s old Penn Station will probably never rest. Which is a good thing, because knocking it down to build Madison Square Garden was one of those epic mistakes that deserves to remain a source of some shared pain, keeping us acutely aware that the quality of our choices in building and rebuilding cities matters a lot. And as unapologetic Penn nostalgists, we were charmed to find that a very talented digital modeler named Zoungy Kligge has created a virtual replica of the structure. He explained the project to us by email:

Although the model you see here is not an exact replica, it is meant to capture the essence of the building in a simpler form. It was created initially from my head (the main waiting room portion in the center with clerestory windows, and the general mass of the rest of the building), and then for the “7th avenue” facade I referenced pictures. The model was made in a single sitting in one day for about 10-12 hours. No blueprints were used.

Since 2002 or 2003 I have been interested in Penn Station. In 2002 I was attending the wedding of a friend (actually the parking day friend) and I walked from 42nd street to 23rd along eighth avenue. There was some sort of fireman’s parade, tens of thousands of them, and they were all going into an ugly round building covered in pebbles which I did not know by name. Months later I found a picture of old Penn’s Main waiting Room interior, and my interest was piqued. I became determined to go visit that room — only to discover that it had been replaced by the ugly round pebble-covered building!

Since that time I have tried to learn as much about the building as I can. I wanted to feel as if I had a chance too to explore the space even though it was demolished a decade before my birth. I have researched online resources, collected thousands of digital photos and drawings, plans and diagrams, visited and explored the site once on my own. These experiences are why I was able to proceed on the model quickly without blueprints and “from my head” for the first few hours.

Kligge’s created the model for the Monopoly City Streets design contest. His blog — SketchUp Island — is full of delightful and original creations. We’re now officially fans. Give it a look.

Artist Ross Racine creates fictional suburbs. He describes his work–”drawn freehand directly on the computer and printed with an inkjet printer”–as a “a comment on the fears as well as the dreams expressed in suburban culture.” What’s eerie is that the images often seem entirely realistic, capturing that odd mix of uninspired marketing whimsy and impracticality that characterizes so many suburban developments.

For example, there’s cloud-shaped Walnut Village–a community that’s both absurd and believable. One has the sense that if we haven’t built a place like that yet, we will very soon.

Below are nine more prosaicly-named communities that exist only in Racine’s imagination.

Aspen Grove and Sunrise Park:

Sunshine Acres:

Highland Farms:

(more…)

The Subway Pictures is a book of hidden camera shots by photographer Peter Peter documenting various odd and poignant moments on the NYC metro. I was reminded of it recently when I found myself in midst of a strange drama on the Q train. I was staring off into space and fidgeting with my phone (of the sort made by that fruity California company). “Fidgeting,” as in just turning it around in my hand — not performing any operations on it. About ten minutes before I was due to get off, the guy next to me, who gave of the vibe of being on parole, turned and accused me of taking his photo. “I heard that thing clicking, man!” he yelled. “You think it’s okay just to humiliate people by taking their pictures?” Then he informed me he was going to kill me.

It quickly got tense. The train car was packed, and everyone was watching but no one said a word. I tried to be both firm and conciliatory in telling him that he was mistaken. I even handed him the iPhone just to prove that I hadn’t taken his picture, but he saw the camera lens and just got madder. At something of an impasse–me saying over and over that I hadn’t been using the camera, and him taking this as an insult to his intelligence–as we pulled into some random station I snatched the phone back and got off the train. With everyone on the car still rapt, he yelled that if he ever saw me again he really would kill me.

So hopefully there will be no more chapters in this tale. But afterward I was moved to look through The Subway Pictures and meditate over Peter Peter’s project. There is something audacious and almost unkind about taking all these pictures of regular people without their knowledge. But that’s also what makes it work.

Anyway, here are seven of my favorite shots from the volume. These are just scans and not great quality, etc. etc., but they do offer a sampling of this very cool project. I guess no one ever heard his hidden camera clicking?

(more…)

Earlier this week, Jim Oberstar was giving a speech to some transportation planning types and told a story. Earlier this year the chairman of the House transportation committee had scribbled down some ideas for the new transportation bill, and he wanted to consult with his colleagues in the Senate. He showed a small number of senators what he’d written and asked if they wanted to offer any inputs or changes. No, they said, you can go ahead and write it all yourself — as long we get to name the bill. (Ha!) Oberstar took the deal.

The senators also suggested that he should consider giving his two-page outline of the bill to the Smithsonian Museum, because it would surely be regarded as a historical document one day. At that point in the speech Oberstar displayed the handwritten sheets on an overhead projector and discussed the contents for a while.

To save you the trip to the Smithsonian in twenty years or so, here is a PDF version of Oberstar’s two-page outline — the document that spawned the 775-page draft of the bill that was unveiled at the beginning of this week.

A couple of other fun moments from the speech:

* To illustrate how American politics have changed, he recalled (not from personal experience–he was elected in 1974) a time when Eisenhower told Congress the they needed to boost the gas tax. It was passed on a voice vote. Whereas today, it’s risking ones political life to merely suggest raising the fuel tax–even though the country desperately needs it.

* He took a potshot at Obama economic advisor Larry Summers, telling the Boston audience that they were welcome to have the former Harvard president back anytime they wanted.

In part one of this series, we saw examples of highway interchanges known as The Cloverstack, The Lofthouse, and The Butt (see above). In this installment, we’ll examine three way interchanges (think trumpets and T-bones) and see a strange and unique case of “braided” freeways.

The Trumpet - A classic design for an interchange where one highway is ending into another:

(more…)

Artist Fiona Gardner and writer Amy Zimmer recently caught up with some of the winners of the Miss Subways pageant, held in New York City between 1941 and 1976, to find out where these former transit beauty queens are today. Their resulting show, ‘Meet Miss Subways,’ presents ten subjects, years later, but once again wearing their victory sash.

The Miss Subways contest, sponsored by the New York Subways Advertising agency, was designed to draw more attention to ads in subway cars. Pictures of the reigning Miss Subways along with a short description of her interests and aspirations were posted among the ads. One such placard for Mary Gardiner, one of the women included in the show, reads: “Thank County Mayo parents for this Washington Heights beauty. An Aquinas graduate, she loves her secretarial job in airline office. Now 19; stands 5′ 71/2″; skates, swims, paints in oil.”

The pageant was open to women who lived in New York and rode the subway. Nominees were chosen by a modeling agent, and the public could vote by phone or mail. Many Miss Subways were working class, and there were African-American, Asian, and Latina winners (Sonia Dominguez, pictured above, was crowned in 1974) long before that was common in mainstream pageants.

(more…)

The people have spoken–with their mouses, that is–and the people like this silly little series. (As, frankly, do we.) And we’re always game to give the people more of what they like. If you haven’t yet seen Part 1, or Part 2, check them out. As you might guess from the headline, the theme here is street signs that are doctored up in funny, cheeky and occasionally smart ways.

More (including some abstract nudity and adult situations) after the jump:

Just cool.

(more…)

We don’t endorse vandalism. But, as we noted the other day in Part 1 of this weighty series, nobody seems ever to have created a gallery like this previously in the internetosphere. We felt obliged to step up. Here are some more amusing attempts–some smart, some juvenile–to bring humor to the staid realm of street signs.

And: please send us pics of others if you have them. Or include links in comments. [UPDATE: Part 3 is now up -- thanks for the submissions!!]

Vanilla Ice’s neighborhood.

(more…)

Last year, two Austrian tourists managed to enter North Korea by train at a border crossing that has been closed to foreigners since 1994. Lucky for us, they took lots of pictures. Below are a few samples from their extensive documentation of their trip (see the full visual and narrative account here, here and here). They also hit Pyongyang–a city 3 million people that does see a bit of tourist traffic–and took some special photographic interest to the city’s infrastructure, especially trams.

Considering that North Korea is nightmarish dictatorship governed by a lunatic there probably aren’t any lessons to be to taken from it, but: Pyongyang–at least based on the shot below with lots of intact farmland close to the city center–does look remarkably sprawl-free.

The photo at top was taken in the area of the DMZ. The last two shots–at the bottom of the gallery, after the jump–are from the forbidden Tumangan border crossing.

More forbidden-ness below.

Pyongyang. Look, ma! No sprawl! (more…)

Say what you will about America’s mortal enemy the former Soviet Union, but they built some wild bus stops.

The series was shot by photographer Christopher Herwig. Click through for a few more samples:

(more…)

Check out Vice magazine’s stunning gallery of photographs of the Jane Cooper Elementary School in Detroit. The building has been out of use for less than two years, and already gangs of urban “scrappers” have harvested everything of value and left the building looking like an ancient ruin.

Some of the shots bear an eerie resemblance to those taken in the “exclusion zone” around Chernobyl (for example this, and this.) And the sapling taking root among the piles of books in the abandoned library also calls to mind Alan Weisman’s book, The World Without Us.

It’s always useful to be reminded how quickly the foundational structures of our society can go to seed when neglected.

More photos after the jump.

(more…)

With her photo exhibition “Ports and Ships,” artist Andrea Frank has set out to document “the invisible global network of vessels crisscrossing the seas, delivering goods, and connecting continents.”

If not quite invisible, this integral element of the global economy–more than 90 percent of international trade is by sea–is not visually familiar to most of us. Container ships and the massive crane networks in port facilities tend to exist in a separate world, at the end of long access roads and behind high security fences. To familiarize them a bit, Frank traveled around the globe documenting the sights at 15 large ports.

“Ports and Ships” is on exhibit through June 14 at the MIT Museum.

Click through to see a few more samples of her work.

(A side note: like many other industries now, shipping is in flux. Trade volumes have plummeted around the world. In fact, there’s so much slack in the system that, as the Economist pointed out recently, it’s now possible to ship a container across the Pacific for free.)

(more…)

OK, the name really sold us. But this is also a remarkable piece of machinery–like the lovechild of one those fighting robots that teams of college engineers design and the giant worm that Kyle McLaughlin rode (he did ride it, didn’t he?) in Dune. The particular model in the video is 1,400 feet long and was built to excavate the world’s longest railway tunnel, a 34-mile job in the Swiss Alps.