Community Architect Baltimore: An overly complicated approach of reinventing Penn Station

Penn Station in Baltimore is an untapped and undervalued asset as I noted before. It is a big deal for Baltimore that it sits on the only high speed rail corridor in the US and connects the center of the city with Manhattan, Philadelphia, DC and the entire Atlantic region. It is an asset that is not nearly mentioned enough, nor is it reflected in local planning.

To this day, Amtrak is left to his own land holdings and investment without any supporting local strategies that would elevate the effort and put the Amtrak investment into the proper context. This is in stark contrast to other cities, for example Denver, which has revived an entire city quarter around an Amtrak station that has only two long distance trains per day; or to DC, where also a brand-new development district sprang up around Union Station. Striking in DC, for example: A giant bus terminal on top of the train tracks and a tiny, but very elegant bike parking station that adorned design magazines around the world. More transit oriented development over the tracks is in the planning stage.

Penn Station sits within a sea of nothingness (Photo: Philipsen)

This isn't the situation in Baltimore. While the decades long talk about sprucing up the station and its environs is finally ramping up to become real action, yesterday's presentation to the City design review panel UDAAP proved how hard it is to reinvent the Penn Station area with just Amtrak land, given that the area is currently characterized by vacant lots, parking lots, a sunken expressway, billboards and the small scale efforts of the reviving Station North neighborhood. The only larger investment in sight is the new Nelson Kohl apartment building north of Lanvale Street. The new UB Law School sits south of the JFX canyon.

The design team of Gensler Baltimore and Mahan Rykiel, selected by developers Beatty Development and Cross Street Partners, presented on Thursday the design of an addition to the station that is proposed for the north side on the Amtrak land at Lanvale Street that is currently a surface parking lot. But when a developer builds a station, then one doesn't just get a public transportation structure, but also a lot of stuff that generates income and makes the pro-forma work. And this presents only the first of a trifecta a problems that make this project so difficult.

Gensler design proposal for station addition as seen from the southeast
(Screenshot from UDAAP presentation)

Geometry is the second. The tracks don't conform to Baltimore's Street grid but run in an angle. The historic Penn Station is a solitary landmark sitting diagonally in the urban landscape. The designers decided to get back to the street grid and reconcile the angles in a variety of shapes. A train station also needs visibility and not disappear in a mundane building like the much hated "new" Penn Station in New York that is mostly visible through a large canopy.

Lastly there is the issue of any bifurcated transportation facility: Where is what? Where is the main entrance, where is the ticket counter, where is my bus, my taxi or my pick up? Today any arriving or departing passenger has only one logical direction to go, the building is super obvious, except maybe for finding the light rail. With an addition which easily doubles the footprint of the station, there are always two ways to go and finding one's way will have to depend largely on signs.

This diagram shows the geometric and functional
problems of this site (Screenshot)

The design team is savvy enough to understand these problems and covered UDAAP with a flurry of diagrams showing circulation, access points, multi-modal connections and opportunities for creating memorable spaces. There was talk of opportunity for "moving and lingering", there is a "stoop" and a "mixing bowl" and the idea of "trains as theater". The "material palette" of the old station is picked up and also contrasted. All in all there was plenty of that particular lingo that architects apply when things are too complicated to speak for themselves. And that is, in a nutshell, the problem with the design.

UDAAP's reception of the design was friendly but unenthusiastic. Architect Pavlina Ilieva, who chaired the review session, said that the form language of the north [addition] is too confusing vis a vis the clarity of the old main building. She summarized her concerns this way: “What I’m worried about is that, in the end, this train station will feel like .. an extension of the podium of the commercial building and it would never read like a train station". The two commercial towers, jammed onto the same lot as the station addition, and proposed for offices and apartments, were only outlined in the renderings.Their design and construction is supposed to come later. Certainly a dilemma for the review panel which also included architect Anthony Osborne and planner Cheryl O'Neill.

The view of the historic station how it would present itself from the
new train hall. (Photo: Philipsen)

O'Neill applauded the "train as a theater" concept and the large glass facade of the north addition which allows a full view of the historic building and the tracks below. Telling an architect that the view of the old building is the best thing his new building has to offer, is probably a double edged compliment.

Anthony Osborne wasn't convinced about "the handshake" between the old and the new as it manifests itself where the historic concourse gets extended to cover an additional track and lead into the new train hall. His suggestion regarding the "complex juxtaposition of volumes" was to "simplify and not amplify" the complexity. Wise words, however it is a question what the designers can do with this advice, as long has they have to jam that much profitable volume into this limited site.

Maybe it would be more successful to complement the station solitaire with another modern solitaire on the north lot that can be tall and slender, but does not conform to the edges of the street grid. In such an approach the north station hall would be little more than a connecting element between two solitaires, allowing rear access to the station but leaving all the main functions in the historic building.

A swooping roof, a large picture window and an unsuccesful concourse
"handshake" (Screenshot)

The even bigger challenge, though, goes to the City: What will Baltimore do to leverage this significant Amtrak investment so that high speed rail really creates transit oriented development on underutilized lots all around?

A bigger masterplan also has to tackle the canyon of the JFX that separates the Station from Mount Vernon. Some type of lid seems to be in order. Baltimore's Amtrak station is too valuable to not leverage the opportunity. A new generation Acela trains will whisk passengers north and south in half hour intervalls. That's more often than the light rail that connects the station.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA