The new Moynihan Train Hall, unveiled by Governor Cuomo on Wednesday, is a sight to behold – a monumentally scaled waiting room for Amtrak and LIRR riders who may blink their eyes twice. Topped with a striking 28-meter skylight, it’s a vision from heaven for passengers accustomed to the underground Penn Station, the Western world’s most hated place to catch a train.
A breezy donut hole in the James A. Farley Post Office building, The Hall is the centerpiece of a larger planned $ 1.6 billion complex in the Farley Building between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and West 31st and 33rd Streets. It will eventually contain a variety of entrances, passageways between the avenues, metro connections, waiting areas, lounges, shops and restaurants. The Hall and Penn Station, one block to the east, collectively called the Pennsylvania Station-Farley Complex, will have 50 percent more station space than just the Penn portion.
It comes after three decades of ever-changing plans since the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan first dreamed of a beautiful replacement for the original Penn Station in the 1980s, which was shamefully torn down in the 1960s. Cuomo deserves credit for getting construction going and seeing through this year, despite COVID-19.
The Train Hall, opening Friday, should ease rat nest congestion at the loathed Penn Station beneath Madison Square Garden, where 650,000 souls squeeze into a space built in the 1960s for just 250,000. LIRR drivers can now hop on and off at both facilities, while Amtrak users will only use the new concourse.
How well it works remains to be seen until the first pandemic-thinned group of riders descends next week. But the mighty roof of the venue is sure to be a hit with the audience.
At first glance, the room looks smaller than suggested. It is also relatively mundane, despite lots of expensive marble and wood, except for the large ceiling.
Three monumental steel trusses, remnants of the post office’s mail sorting area, divide the acres of glass from the roof into four ‘parabolic’ vaults, each consisting of 500 glass and steel panels with a web-like design.
It lets in more light than the skylight roofs of the Oculus World Trade Center and the Fulton Transit Center. It is delightful when the sun shines and gives the whole room a golden glow.
But the hall’s unfinished appendages are a confusing maze of escalators, stairs, lounges, and corridors. Despite a sea of signs, it is difficult to find the fastest way to Eighth Avenue. If the old Penn Station contained “the sound of the times,” as adorable writers called it, the Moynihan could hold the sounds of people trying to figure out which way is up.
Project architects SOM and politicians are doing the Moynihan a disservice by constantly comparing it to the impossible-to-replicate original Penn Station. Sorry guys, it’s not even close, despite a superficial resemblance. The Moynihan Hall should be enjoyed as it is – less than a masterpiece, but a fine example of “adaptive reuse” architecture and a vast improvement on the Penn Station we all love to hate.