Baltimore’s Penn Station emerging from its wrappings
The scaffolding has come off much of Pennsylvania Station, revealing the finely articulated facade that now shines in the March sunlight. It was not always like this. For decades the station’s big windows seemed to be falling apart and the 1911 stone work needed strengthening and repointing.
It’s worth a trip to the Station North neighborhood just to take in this visual change that was more than two years in the making.
The idea is to tie in the station with the gradual changes that have occurred along the Charles Street-North Avenue axis. And Amtrak’s investment in the station is continuing and is expected to move ahead at a deliberate speed.
As it took more than two years to clean, repair and relight the south-facing station exterior, it’s going to take even more time to complete an ambitious reworking of the station campus. This is the first act in what will be a long opera.
While the cleaned facade is visually pleasing and makes a strong statement, there is plenty that is not as visible. Workers are putting finishing touches on a new concrete train platform. It’s lengthy — it runs from Maryland Avenue on the west to Guilford Avenue on the east.
Bill Struever, a member of the development team working on the station, said, “We are a long way from delivery. We’re looking at a 2026 completion of the station and we’re showing the upstairs space for use as offices.”
There’s a new elevator and escalator, too, that will be used when the new generation of high-speed trains arrive. Amtrak recently announced there will be additional train service to Baltimore to meet an increase in train ridership.
That’s good news for Baltimore because trains that arrive here from Washington, D.C., are often heavily booked. On a recent Friday afternoon, a conductor apologized for the crowded train (seats were scarce) and blamed Amtrak’s reservations department for overselling.
Act two of the station’s reworking will be a new concourse and glassy building — essentially a new entrance — on what is now a Lanvale Street parking lot. This could accommodate new eating facilities. As it now stands, the food offerings at Penn Station are not much more than coffee, donuts and maybe a banana.
Acts three and four, and maybe five, will be the construction of the new Frederick Douglass tunnel under West Baltimore. This is a project that’s been talked about for decades. The present tunnel under Bolton Hill and Sandtown-Winchester was hand-dug and brick-lined in 1873.
The tunnel is one of the busiest unseen pieces of transportation infrastructure in Baltimore. Nearly 130 trains, both Amtrak and MARC, use this lengthy cavity daily.
And while it makes no sense today, the tunnel was once promoted as a way to bring Southern Maryland’s tobacco crop to ships in the Baltimore harbor.
The 1.5-mile tunnel functioned without complaint until May 1924, when a city water main burst at McMechen Street and North Avenue. There was a flood and a ceiling collapse that took months to repair.
The new tunnel also will bring new opportunities to the passage’s portal neighborhood at the West Baltimore MARC Station, which will be rebuilt. This area, at the western end of what is called the “Highway to Nowhere,” could be a place of reinvestment and potential development.
The tunnel rebuild project is another opera, and a long one too.
