A 42nd Street skyscraper’s leaf motif

This lovely band of leaflike curves is part of the lower facade of the Chanin Building, a 56-story office tower on Lexington and 42nd Street.

It’s a little bit of Art Deco across from the Beaux-Arts Grand Central Terminal, which was built just a decade and a half earlier but feels like it’s from an entirely different era.

A bird’s-eye view of Pennsylvania Station

Hard to believe the Pennsylvania Railroad got away with demolishing this 1910 McKim, Mead  and White beauty. (If they needed a big parcel of land, why didn’t they tear down the Port Authority Bus Terminal instead?)

But that’s what happened in 1963. Penn Station’s destruction subsequently ushered in an era of historic preservation.

 

View ore images of the old Penn Station—inside and outside— here.