50 Years Ago, Protesters Fought To Preserve Penn Station

The Fight For The Old Penn Station

By David W. Dunlap

The architects Peter Samton and Diana Goldstein can tell you exactly where they were a half century ago, at 5 p.m. on Aug. 2, 1962: out on Seventh Avenue, tilting at windmills.

Pennsylvania Station, the McKim, Mead & White masterpiece, was doomed. They knew it. But they weren't going to let it go down undefended. With Norval White, Jordan Gruzen, Elliott Willensky and others, they assembled an impromptu resistance brigade known as Agbany, for Action Group for Better Architecture in New York.

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