Suburban Station
- Architect
- Graham, Anderson, Probst & White
- Year
- 1929
- Style
- Art Deco
- City
- Philadelphia, PA
- Collection
- philly deco
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Suburban Station is an Art Deco office building and underground commuter rail station at 16th Street and JFK Boulevard in Penn Center, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and opened September 28, 1930. The Pennsylvania Railroad built it to replace the aboveground Broad Street Station as Center City's suburban commuter terminal, while PRR's intercity trains used 30th Street Station instead. It's now one of SEPTA's three core Center City Regional Rail stations and among the busiest in the system.
the building
One Penn Center. The station complex includes a 21-story office tower, One Penn Center, which served as the Pennsylvania Railroad's own headquarters from 1930 to 1957, the railroad building its corporate home directly atop its own commuter terminal.
A terminal with a job to do. The station opened as a stub-end terminal built specifically to pull suburban commuter trains off the street-level Broad Street Station, a functional split that sent PRR's long-distance intercity trains to 30th Street Station instead.
the style
The building is Art Deco, the idiom of choice for major American train stations and office towers built right at the end of the 1920s, though the record here doesn't detail specific ornament beyond the style label.
More on Art Decothe architect
Suburban Station was designed by the firm Graham, Anderson, Probst & White; no further biographical detail on the firm is documented in this record.
significance
Suburban Station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was originally named Broad Street Suburban Station, and when Amtrak took over Silverliner service from Penn Central in 1972, it operated Clockers and express trains to New York terminating here.
nearby
- BNY Mellon Center
- Arch Street Presbyterian Church
- Liberty Place
- Comcast Technology Center
- Masonic Temple
- Philadelphia City Hall