By Jason Laughlin, The Philadelphia Inquirer; July 12, 2019
Philadelphia’s train station, recently renamed the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station, has meaning for this city far beyond the long-defunct railroad company it was built to glorify.
Its soaring Corinthian columns anchor the western edge of Center City and serve as a gateway to the growing University City. It is one of two secular temples paired on opposite banks of the Schuylkill. Like the Museum of Art, completed in 1928, just six years before the train station, it is an immediately recognizable neoclassical landmark, a place used in movies from Witness to this year’s Glass to announce “This is Philadelphia.”