GREYHOUND BUS TERMINAL
244-248 West 34th Street
JULY 14, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 142

Pennsylvania Station, discarded image 1

In the 1930s, bus travel was a new industry, which provided passenger service that was cheaper and more flexible than the railroads. Built in 1935 across the street from McKim, Mead & White's monumental Pennsylvania Station (1910), the streamlined Greyhound Bus Terminal was the perfect symbol for this modernization of travel.

Pennsylvania Station, discarded image 2

Abbott photographed the bus terminal from the Pennsylvania Building at 225 West 34th Street. This mundane office building still stands, but the terminal was replaced in 1972 by the huge, undistinguished office building 1 Penn Plaza. The same day she photographed the terminal, Abbott made several exposures of the interior of Pennsylvania Station. She avoided the station's grand marble staircases and academic murals and concentrated on the glass-roofed concourse, which accessed the track platforms. Working in the early morning when the concourse was almost empty, she focused on the complex geometries of steel and glass. Although she made proofs of two Penn Station images and assigned a researcher to the file, Abbott discarded the subject from the project. After the old Penn Station was demolished in 1966, these discarded photographs became some of Abbott's best known.

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