30th Street Station, PRR's Philadelphia Landmark

Entire libraries could be written on the Pennsylvania Railroad ranging from its history to the different businesses it owned, far, far too much to cover here which is a mere brief history of the railroad. The Pennsy was an institution to the City of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania. For over 100 years the keystone represented the PRR as much as it did the State of Pennsylvania itself.

The Pennsylvania Railroad is remembered for many things with two of the railroad’s most lasting achievements its grand monument to New York City, Pennsylvania Station and its legendary passenger train, The Broadway Limited.

Despite the PRR’s enormous success, following World War II and the traffic downturn of the 1950s, the future was uncertain for the carrier. Mounting losses and old-fashioned management practices were bringing down the iconic Pennsylvania Railroad (so legendary was the PRR that even as things continued to worsen, no one felt anything terrible would befall the railroad) and by the 1950s she was getting desperate. It was during this time that the Pennsylvania Railroad began exploring the idea of merger with bitter and longtime rival, New York Central.

Broad Street Station was a stub-ended design forcing the Pennsy to back passenger trains into and out of the station, which was both awkward and very time consuming. To alleviate this problem the railroad decided that it needed that was a “through” design were trains did not have to perform any such backup moves. Along with this the PRR also simply need a larger building as Broad Street was becoming too small for the large volume of traffic it was handling. So, in the 1920s plans began to be made to construct what would become 30th Street Station and the PRR hired the architectural firm Graham, Anderson, Probst and White from Chicago to oversee such.

What they came up with was a beautiful Art Deco inspired interior design with an exterior look that somewhat resembled the railroad’s iconic Pennsylvania Station in New York. Overall the building measured 700 feet long (over two football fields!) by 325 feet wide and featured over 560,000 square-feet of interior space. Also similar to Pennsylvania Station, 30th Street Station was designed so that passengers boarded their trains below ground, completely away from the concourse and above ground sections of the station (30th Street was also split between commuter and intercity passenger trains to keep the flow of traffic more organized). After several years of construction the new station finally opened in 1934, demoting Broad Street Station which was eventually razed in 1953.

Today, 30th Street Station is on the National Register of Historic Places and a Philadelphia landmark. The building is also the headquarters of Amtrak and along with playing host to its trains also serves commuters train of NJ Transit and SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority), which serve millions of commuters annually.

For more information on 30th Street Station please click here to visit its website.

For more reading about railroad stations you might want to consider a copy of Railroad Stations from author Brian Solomon. While the book is just a very general overview of some of the great stations that once stood in this country it is quite good with lots of historical photographs, including that of Grand Central Terminal and the late Pennsylvania Station (it also gives a history of the thousands of small depots that existed in most communities). All in all if you’re interested in stations and depots you’re sure to enjoy Mr. Solomon’s book on the subject.