Trump’s love of “anti-woke” buildings could boost new design for Penn Station

A plan to return Penn Station to its former glory could win a new lease on life under the Trump administration — at least so go the hopes of architect and former city urban designer Alexandros Washburn, who announced Tuesday he’ll be formally submitting his plans for a neo-classical take on Penn to the feds.

“We’ve been working on this for many many years,” said Washburn, who is leading the effort for the “Grand Penn Community Alliance,” a consortium of backers invested in rebuilding the midtown transit hub as an echo of the original 1910 Beaux-Arts station.

“We are specifically here today for this,” Washburn said Tuesday, holding up a large roll of paper on a stage at the New York Historical. “This roll of drawings is called the ‘reasonable alternative,’ and this is what we are sending down to the U.S. Department of Transportation — a set of measured architectural drawings for this unified project.”

The plan would require moving Madison Square Garden, a roadblock that has slowed movement on a new station.

The MTA’s efforts to select a new design for the transit hub have not advanced in recent years, but when they do, federal environmental law requires the DOT to examine any “reasonable alternatives” to a given proposal during the environmental review — a requirement Washburn and his organization see as an opportunity to call attention to their plan.

The decision to submit the plans comes at an auspicious time for the neo-classical crowd. Among President Trump’s flurry of first-day executive orders in January was one little-noticed demand that new federal architecture “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage.”

Indeed, Grand Penn Community Alliance counts among its founders Tom Klingenstein — chairman of the right-wing think tank the Claremont Institute and a major Trump donor — who has written previously in favor of classical architecture as “anti-woke.”

Washburn, the man behind the design of the Moynihan train hall across the street and an urban designer in Michael Bloomberg’s City Hall, said he has been working on his plan for three years.

The Alliance’s plan involves a grand columned entrance on Seventh Avenue, reminiscent of the original, as well as park space between the entrance and the Moynihan Train Hall on Eighth Avenue.

Renderings presented Tuesday by Washburn show “Grand Penn” as an above ground station with ample sunlight streaming through steel and glass walls.

The plan would put a park between the new station and Moynihan train hall, opening up green space to one of Manhattan’s more congested communities.

The catch, though, is a big one: Madison Square Garden — the massive arena currently perched atop the subterranean remains of the original Penn station — would have to move across the street.

The MTA, which is expected to start seeking bidders for a redesign of the station in the near future, expects the arena to stay in place. So too does ASTM, a design firm that has been pushing its own vision of a new Penn Station which would buy out and demolish a small section of MSG to create a “grand entrance” on Eighth Avenue.

MSG kingpin James Dolan, who owns the massive facility, has long described the relocation of his kingdom as a nonstarter, saying simply “I’m not going to move Madison Square Garden.”

Washburn’s plan would build a new facility for the Garden across Seventh Avenue at the site of the Penn Hotel.

“Mr. Dolan is a businessman, I believe he will do what’s the best deal for him,” Washburn said, adding that a new facility “appeals to the fans, to the Garden — it’s operationally more efficient.”

With Téa Kvetenadze