Riders on New Jersey Transit trains last week were delighted to discover a windfall at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan: a new marble-encrusted $125 million concourse to remedy Pennsylvania Station's lack of amenities for the New Jersey-bound.
Once on the flat marble of the station concourse, the motor isn't needed and turns off to preserve battery life.
The Buffalo Central Terminal is undoubtedly a marvel, but it's also the closest thing imaginable to a time warp for Buffalonians: the ticket booths remain vacant; the refurbished information clock kiosk casts a faint pale light on the marble floor; the passenger concourse is now nothing more than the rusted remains of a railroad track that has been waiting decades for the sound of a train whistle.
Marble parquet floors are gleaming, the concourse lighted by massive wheel-shaped light fixtures hanging from the 50-foot ceilings.
The Rhine Maiden surveys her domain proudly now, sitting atop the marble Heinrich Heine fountain in Joyce Kilmer Park, near the Grand Concourse and across 161st Street from the Bronx County Courthouse and Yankee Stadium.
Ms. Van Pelt, in ivory lace and mink, swept down the grand marble staircase leading from Vanderbilt Avenue, and crossed the teeming concourse to the information booth, where Mr. Self, in a morning coat, waited with relatives and guests from all over.
THE first surprise came about two years ago, with the opening of the shiny marble- and mosaic-covered Todd English Food Hall, in the lower-level concourse of the Plaza.
The vaulted ceiling of the main concourse rises a hundred feet or more above the station's marble floor.
Reflecting the level of care lavished on the Main Concourse, a Tennessee quarry was reopened to provide the dark-rose marble steps for the new east staircase to match those on the west, which have proved themselves over the decades as a good walking surface that resists conspicuous staining.
Still he filed quietly with his classmates across marble floors and Oriental rugs and into the school's dim auditorium, on Grand Concourse a few blocks from Yankee Stadium.
