The new Moynihan train lobby, unveiled on Wednesday by Governor Cuomo, is a sight to behold: a monumental scale waiting room for Amtrak and LIRR pilots who could blink twice. Crowned with a 92-foot-tall skylight, it’s a view from the sky for passengers drawn to the Penn Station underground, the most hated place in the western world to catch a train.
The Hall, a threaded hole inside the James A. Farley Post Office building, is the centerpiece of a larger $ 1.6 billion complex planned inside the building. Farley between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and West 31st and 33rd Streets. Finally, it will include a ticket gap, aisles between avenues, subway links, waiting areas, lounges, shops and restaurants. The Hall and Penn Station, one block to the east, called the Pennsylvania Station-Farley complex together, will have 50% more room space than the Penn portion.
It comes after three decades of ever-changing plans since Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who disappeared in the 1980s, first dreamed of a magnificent replacement for the original Penn Station, which was dishonorably demolished in the 1960s. Cuomo deserves the credit for starting this year and finishing construction this year, despite COVID-19.
The Train Hall, which opens Friday, is supposed to reduce the congestion of rat nests at the hated Penn station, under Madison Square Garden, where 650,000 souls sink into a space built in the 1960s by just 250,000. LIRR pilots can now board and exit trains at either facility, while Amtrak users will only use the new train room.
How well it works has not yet been seen until the first week of cyclists descends the first pandemic. But the large ceiling of the hall is sure to be a hit with the public.
At first glance, the room looks smaller than the suggested representations. It is also relatively mundane, despite a lot of expensive wood and marble, except for the large ceiling.
Three monumental steel trusses, remnants of the post office’s mail sorting room, divide the glass acre from the ceiling into four “parabolic” vaults, each of which includes 500 glass and steel panels with a network-like design.
It lets in more light than the skylight ceilings of the Oculus World Trade Center and the Fulton Transit Center. It is wonderful when the sun rises and gives a golden glow to the entire living room.
But the unfinished appendages of the living room are a confusing maze of escalators, stairs, lounges, and hallways. It is difficult to find the fastest path to Eighth Avenue, despite a sea of signs. If the old Penn Station had “the sound of time,” as the revered writers called it, the Moynihan could contain the sounds of people trying to figure out which way there is.
SOM project architects and politicians do Moynihan a disservice by constantly comparing it to the original Penn Station which cannot be replicated. I’m sorry, guys, it’s not even close, despite a superficial resemblance. Moynihan Hall should be enjoyed for what it is, less than a masterpiece, but a good example of “adaptive reuse” architecture and a great improvement over Penn Station that we all like to hate.