If you survey the people of the streets of New York City today, most of them would refer to Pennsylvania Station as the underground, dim lighted, dark and dirty train terminal as it appears today. The station is situated beneath the huge and rather ugly, Madison Square Garden. To millennials, Pennsylvania station is just any regular train station. It's the train station that takes you in and out of New York City. But low and behold to many, Pennsylvania Station used to be a grand train terminal. The station “did not make you feel comfortable; it made you feel important.” The decline in rail service during the 1950’s left most railroad companies to find creative ways to attract consumers. Unfortunately, with the increase in interstate highway …show more content…
Cassatt. He was determined to find a way find a way for rail service to enter into New York City. On September 8, 1910, the grand Pennsylvania Station opened, designed by renowned architecture firm, McKim, Mead and White, and accepted its first train through the Hudson River tunnels at midnight. The train was welcomed by 2,000 passengers, astonished by the architectural beauty the new station held. The designs of Penn Station were inspired by many great buildings of ancient Rome, including the “Baths of Caracalla” of Titus and Diocletian and the “Basilica of Constantine.” The exterior was made of pink milford granite while the interior resembled Corinthian style columns made of travertine that were quarried near Tivoli, Italy and imported. The 300 foot long, 110 foot wide and 150 foot high main waiting room resembled the size of the “Nave of St. Peter's in Rome.” Once the doors opened, the main halls flooded with crowds of people interested in witnessing this masterpiece come to life. The opening of this great station provided a “monumental gateway and entrance” into New York City and now connected the city to major rail routes including, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta, New Orleans and many other major cities. This represented a major shifting in the ways passengers entered New York City and would prove the Pennsylvania Railroad as a renowned railroad company for the next 30
During the train trip from Washington D.C. to Savannah, Georgia, it was difficult for Marian Anderson and her mother because they had to put up with racism, discrimination, and segregation while on that single train ride. Since they were segregated from the whites and the "white folk" had the more luxurious train car, the colored people were expected to ride inside the more dilapidated train car. The car that they were riding in was "dirty inside and out" and had "windows [that] were badly in need of washing, and the ventilation and lighting were poor." This means that the conditions that the colored people were expected to reside in were of extremely low quality. Not only that, but it can be inferred that people can get sick while on the train ride. The line, "...the air became stuffy and the windows were raised, smoke and soot from the engine directly ahead poured into the car." shows that people were unable to breathe properly while in the train car. The people riding the "lower class and colored car" would have to make a choice of either feeling cramped inside the "stuffy car" or feel less cramped but not be able to breathe properly.
In Henry George’s article, What the Railroad Will Bring Us, it discusses the main social, political, and economic transformations that the trans-continental railroad would bring to the state of California. More importantly, he discusses not only the benefits, but also discusses the major drawbacks with the arrival of the railroad. Henry George stated the railroad would be the “greatest work of the age” (297). With a railroad stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, multiple benefits would be brought to the state of California. First, the railroad will not only create a new means of transportation across the United States, it additionally would also become “one of the greatest material prosperity” of its time (298). This means more people, more houses,
There is one reason Chicago is as big as it is today and that is the fact that it is the largest rail city in the world. The railroad made Chicago what it is today, and although the canal was very important in the history of Chicago the railroads importance out weighs it by far. The canal was important because it was the vision of the first settlers of Chicago to have an all water trade route that would go through Chicago. What those first explorers saw was a way to make a canal so that they could transport goods from the St Lawrence River all the way to the Gulf of Mexico with less cost and with more efficiency. The canal was the reason Chicago was settled in the first place if not for it there might very well not be a city called Chicago. You could argue that the canal was the most important thing in Chicago's history but I think the railroads were much more important. The railroads enabled Chicago to become one of the biggest cities in the world by bringing in different business and all types of goods. Chicago is a very key location to have a railroad-shipping hub. This is because it is centrally located in the United States so goods can be shipped in almost any direction and received in a shorter amount of time. William Butler Ogden was the one who pushed for Chicago to adopt a large rail system and he should be known as the one who made this city boom. St. Louis or another centrally located city could have very well adopted the rail system and they would have reaped all the benefits.
The growth of agriculture and railroads in Texas and in the United States helped form our economy today. Railroads today pass through a lot of Texas, and even in big cities like Houston or Dallas. Since there are so many farms and open farmland (especially in south and west Texas), railroads can carry the produce and livestock to their destination. James Watt invented the first steam engine in about 1769, and from then on, railroads were a must for transportation, since cars had yet to be invented. Railroads began to be built before the Civil War. It originally took about 6 months to get from the west of the US to the east, but now it only took 7 days. With railroads expanding all across the country, agriculture was affected in a mostly positive way. Now, crops and other goods could be transported by train anywhere in the US, and fast.
The Underground Railroad was an extremely complex organization whose mission was to free slaves from southern states in the mid-19th century. It was a collaborative organization comprised of white homeowners, freed blacks, captive slaves, or anyone else who would help. This vast network was fragile because it was entirely dependent on the absolute discretion of everyone involved. A slave was the legal property of his owner, so attempting escape or aiding a fugitive slave was illegal and dangerous, for both the slave and the abolitionist. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass understands that he can only reveal so many details about his escape from servitude, saying, “I deeply regret the necessity that impels
In 1961, the US Freedom Rides was quite a significant event that is still remembered by many Americans and African-Americans today. It was the time when racial discrimination and segregation had existed and has had an immense effect and impact on African-Americans. Yet, it had ended after a lot of hard work protesting, campaigning in different areas of America and thanks to some key events that had also helped along with these including the Birmingham Campaign and Martin Luther King Jr’s activism. This event of the United States however is a lot similar to events that had occurred in Australia at the time and is considered to be an inspiration to Aboriginal activism and protest in Australia. The event that took place for the Aboriginal activism
The arrival to Manhattan was like an entry to a whole new world: from the sea, its breezes, color, and landscapes, to the heart of the city beating louder than ever at the Whitehall Terminal. I could smell New York’s bagels in Battery Park with a mixture of the most relaxing scents: the coffee people were holding while walking down the streets, the old walls of Castle Clinton ...
A waterfront area located in Philadelphia, known as Penn’s Landing, has become a central area of redevelopment over many decades. What used to be trees and shrubs has transformed into an area of hotels, museums, restaurants, casinos, stadiums, and much more. This 35-acre site has so much to offer and has become an important area of public space for anyone to visit and enjoy. Penn’s Landing is a public space that benefits the public by containing a mixture of residential life, entertainment, and retail that is supported by a long history of creation and redevelopment.
Foner prefaces his book with earlier narratives of the Underground Railroad, emphasizing how they incorrectly define the railroad as an intricate network of tunnels, trains and stations, all a
The Underground Railroad despite occurring centuries ago continues to be an “enduring and popular thread in the fabric of America’s national historical memory” as Bright puts it. Throughout history, thousands of slaves managed to escape the clutches of slavery by using a system meant to liberate. In Colson Whitehead’s novel, The Underground Railroad, he manages to blend slave narrative and history creating a book that goes beyond literary or historical fiction. Whitehead based his book off a question, “what if the Underground Railroad was a real railroad?” The story follows two runaway slaves, Cora and Caesar, who are pursued by the relentless slave catcher Ridgeway. Their journey on the railroad takes them to new and unfamiliar locations,
The film Fruitvale Station is a romance, crime, and drama filled movie based on a true story. In 2009, Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer in Oakland, Fruitvale train station. However, he was not pronounced dead until later the next morning at the Highland Hospital. The overall effect the hospital scene gives in this film is the shock of reality, the loss of a loved one and heartbreak. There are different mise-en-scenes involved with this scene to help project the reality check a major crime of one individual can have on a family/community both to the characters in the movie and the viewers of the film.
One modernization in agriculture was the utilization of the railroads for distribution. Railroads provided farmers with the ability to ship their products vast distances. No longer were their markets limited to their local towns, but they could now reach a market on the opposite side of the country. Competition between railroad companies also contributed to lower fares, which helped the farmers cheaply move their wares to their chosen markets (Text Pgs. 524-525).
In mid-20th century western society, preconceptions of male behavior remained inert. Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire exemplifies rigid stereotypes of an alpha male within American society and Gallimard from M Butterfly juxtaposes with a deep, but thus far unfulfilled, desire for complete dominance over a woman. Society expected men to be exclusive figures of authority within the home, and more generally patriarchal dominants.
Crossing a railroad in a motor vehicle can be very dangerous. To prevent serious injury or fatalities from trains a driver should know how to safely cross a railroad. First the driver should alway slow down, this gives the driver more time to think and observe their surroundings. A driver should never pass another car traveling in the same direction as them at a railroad crossing. When passing a car the driver can not see if their is a train coming from the right side, keep in mind that if a car is stopped and you plan to pass it is not a very smart idea considering the car is stopped for a reason. Before crossing a railroad you should turn down your car radio as conductors will often sound the horn on a train while approaching a crossing. A driver should always assume that there is a train
When most people think about an eventful or memorable place, they almost certainly would not picture a bus. As we all know, buses are not exactly attractive. The design scheme is the same in almost every bus: rows and rows of brown seats, a thin black aisle down the middle of the bus, hundreds of hazy windows, and the big, lemon-yellow exterior. Not many people, I am sure, would consider buses to be an important part of their lives. However, if a person were to think about it, they would realize that they probably have had at least one memorable experience in their life that took place on a bus.