Lester C. Tichy

Lester C. Tichy (1905–1981) was a prolific 20th-century American architect and industrial designer. Tichy is perhaps best known for his association with the Pennsylvania Railroad, for which he created the infamous "Clamshell", an aluminum and steel canopy over the electronic ticketing area, in Penn Station’s Main Waiting Room in New York City. Tichy's "Clamshell" is largely seen as a harbinger of the station's ultimate demolition, and stands for the lost landmark's final decline.

Early life Born in 1905, Tichy studied at Columbia University in Upper Manhattan. After graduation, Tichy toured Europe and began working under John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson Memorial. Tichy ultimately left his mark on homes, railroad stations, dormitories, and even the paint schemes of Long Island Rail Road trains over the course of a long and varied career.

Tichy was a protégé of Raymond Loewy, another venerable Pennsylvania Railroad designer. Like Loewy, Tichy proceeded to design a wide range of structures for the Pennsylvania across its sprawling system.

At Aberdeen, Tichy designed a compact, streamlined station with Machine Age details. At Enola, Tichy created a dormitory that provided "neat," "quiet," and "comfortable" accommodations for Railroad men in need of a place to retire after long freight runs. Another Tichy dorm at Harrisburg offered "big, full-height, corrugated-glass" windows in keeping with the "progressive" tastes of the times. Throughout the middle of the 20th-century, Tichy designed flat-roofed structures that found critical acclaim in the publications of his time. In 1945, House & Garden recognized one of Tichy's telltale houses with a prize in its "Blueprints for Tomorrow" architectural contest. This newfound notoriety led to additional commissions, including a "streamlined metal and glass snack bar" for La Guardia Airport in 1948. The Pennsylvania, confronting mounting passenger losses, contracted with Tichy to replace Penn Station's grand Savarin dining room with a series of two bowling alleys in an attempt to raise cash off its cavernous – but cash-bleeding – Manhattan facility.

With the scent of redevelopment in the air, Tichy then began designing an airline-style ticket counter to satiate the Pennsylvania's desire to boost ticket sales and make money off its station.

The result was a "modernistic, clamshell-shaped, sawtooth-edged, fluorescent-bathed ticket counter" in the center of Penn Station's monumental – but, by then, soot-streaked and grimy – Main Waiting Room. and many now agree Tichy's "Clamshell" was "a nail in the station's coffin" and "the final insult to McKim, Mead & White’s heroic 1910 station." After a series of starts and stops, the Pennsylvania Railroad did eventually refine and deploy Tichy's demolition and redevelopment concept to destroy the original Penn Station and construct Madison Square Garden on top. Thus, every time a railroad passenger "scuttles" into today's Penn Station "like a rat," they have, in part, architect Lester C. Tichy to thank.