The new Moynihan Train Hall, unveiled on Wednesday by Governor Cuomo, is a sight to behold – a monumental scale waiting room for Amtrak and LIRR passengers who can blink twice. Crowned by a 36-meter-high skylight that opens your eyes wide, it is a view of the sky for passengers accustomed to the underground Penn Station, the most hated place in the western world to catch a train.
The Hall, an airy screw hole inside the James A. Farley Post Office building, is the centerpiece of a planned $ 1.6 billion complex within the Farley building between 8th and 9th Avenues and 31st and 31st Street. 33 west. Eventually, it will include a bunch of entrances, passages between avenues, subway connections, waiting areas, lounges, shops and restaurants. The Hall and Penn Station one block to the east, together called the Pennsylvania Station-Farley Complex, will have 50 percent more space in the lobby than the Penn portion alone.
It comes after three decades of constantly changing plans, since the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1980s first dreamed of a magnificent replacement for the original Penn Station, which was shamefully demolished in the 1960s. Cuomo deserves credit for kick-starting and seeing construction this year, despite the COVID-19.
The Train Hall, which opens Friday, is expected to reduce congestion in rat nests at the loathed Penn Station below Madison Square Garden, where 650,000 souls squeeze into a space built in the 1960s to just 250,000. LIRR passengers can now hop on and off trains at any of the facilities, while Amtrak users will only use the new Train Hall.
It is not yet known how it works until the first crowd of pilots diminished by the pandemic descends next week. But the Hall’s powerful roof is sure to be a hit with the public.
The Hall at first glance seems smaller than the suggested representations. It is also relatively mundane, despite the large amount of expensive marble and wood – except for the large ceiling.
Three monumental steel trusses, reminiscent of the post office’s sorting room, divide the glass acre of the roof into four “parabolic” vaults, each comprising 500 glass and steel panels with a web-like design.
It allows more light to enter than the roofs of the World Trade Center Oculus and Fulton Transit Center skylights. It’s wonderful when the sun comes out and gives a golden glow to the whole room.
But the Hall’s unfinished appendages are a messy maze of escalators, stairs, rooms and corridors. It is difficult to find the fastest way to Eighth Avenue, despite a sea of signs. If the old Penn Station kept “the sound of time”, as devout writers called it, Moynihan could contain the sounds of people trying to figure out which way is up.
The SOM project architects and politicians render Moynihan a terrible service, constantly comparing him to the original Penn Station, impossible to replicate. Sorry, guys, it doesn’t even come close, despite a superficial resemblance. Moynihan Hall should be appreciated for what it is – less than a masterpiece, but a beautiful example of “adaptive reuse” architecture and a major improvement over the Penn Station that we all love to hate.