Between east and west campus, they have a capacity of 700,000 lbs of steam per hour.
https://opp.psu.edu/unit/steam-services
https://news.psu.edu/story/460837/2017/04/17/campus-life/one...
The big reason for centralized steam rather than small boilers in each building was fuel. Penn State (and many other colleges / institutions in the northeast) was originally heated with coal. There was a rail spur that ran to the campus power plant for delivering it. Delivering coal to each building would have been a lot of effort, and negates the efficiency of a large boiler compared to small ones. So you create the steam in one place and then distribute the steam. (Also there used to be fairly strict rules on having a licensed "operating engineer" at each boiler when it was operating.)
With natural gas now being the dominant fuel, it's almost certainly more efficient to distribute the gas and then generate the steam (or hot water, much more common today) near the point of use, with a high-efficiency boiler/heater.
I just don't think central heating has the advantages today it used to, unless you're in the unusual situation that you have a "free" source of steam (e.g. from process equipment). The boilers used now are compact, low maintenance, and have impressive remote management features. The "steam plant" staff here went from a dozen operating a building to a computer workstation at the facilities operations desk for remote monitoring and a few roving maintenance technicians.
We are also currently transitioning from a central standby power plant to generators located at each building. This is being done for almost the exact same reasons - the generators today are small, low cost, perform testing and exercise automatically, and are remotely monitored.
There's at least one HVAC company around here that still specializes in boilers and radiators. We had our boiler replaced last year and the system tuned up - there's hardly any water hammer or hissing now and as other commenters have mentioned, the heat feels great.
Article: https://www.miuraboiler.com/resources/news/blowing-off-steam
http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2013/02/14...
If not, mini-split systems might be a good solution for upgrading the home's heating (and cooling).
After a ridiculous amount of searching and reading, I've come to find that basically nobody knows what they're talking about on the subject. The advice online and in person essentially amounts to witchcraft. I noticed people using the same adjectives/verbs to describe steam-heating that sellers of essential oils use. Finding Dan Holohan's website was like finding a miracle. Steam heating is so simple and efficient but it was done in an era when documentation and standardization was more nonexistent than today. If you sit down and draw diagrams and think about the system you have in your house it becomes so simple... but without that hour of logic and shaping of the problem you get no where fast. It was such a good 'back to the basics' experience for me that I wouldn't trade for my doctorate degree.