The Visionary Behind Penn Station

By Drew Fetherston | Staff Writer

He stood at the top of the Great Staircase in Pennsylvania Station, gazing down into one of the most magnificent rooms ever built on the continent: The station's two-block-long, marble-lined main waiting room.

The onlooker -- or, more accurately, a bronze statue in his likeness - was Alexander Johnston Cassatt, the man whose vision built Penn Station and much else besides. He had as much influence as anyone on the evolution of Long Island.

Cassatt was born to wealth in Pittsburgh and spent years of his youth in Europe, traveling with his family and studying. His younger sister was the famous impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

In 1859, at age 19, Cassatt graduated as a civil engineer from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy -- the same school as Washington Roebling, who was to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Two years later, Cassatt joined the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1882, when he was top vice president and in line to become president, Cassatt retired suddenly to breed racehorses and farm stock.

Seventeen years later, with the railroad facing fiscal crises, he returned as its president. Under Cassatt, the railroad's earnings doubled and its freight volume increased by half. His leadership was enlightened: He established a pension fund for the railroad's workers and twice raised their wages by 10 percent. In 1900, Cassatt acquired the Long Island Rail Road and incorporated it into a grand plan to link the Pennsylvania Railroad with New York City and the New England rail system.

Cassatt died in 1906; like LIRR president Austin Corbin, he never lived to see his great plan reach fruition. But when it was done, in 1910, Pennsylvania tracks ran under the Hudson and East Rivers to meet under Penn Station. The four East River tunnels made it practical to commute to Manhattan from great stretches of Long Island.

The effects on Long Island continue to our day, but Penn Station itself was razed in the 1960s to make way for the Madison Square Garden complex. Cassatt's statue today stands in a railroad museum in Strasburg, Pa.