After 28 years of stops and starts, at least 13 different designs, five New York state governors (two named Cuomo), eight Amtrak presidents, and numerous near-death experiences, Moynihan Train Hall opened on January 1. What a long strange trip it’s been! A 486,000-square-foot transportation and retail complex inserted in the landmark James A. Farley Post Office Building across the street from the existing Pennsylvania Station, Moynihan Hall expands waiting areas and access to existing train platforms and tracks serving Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad.
Named after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who championed it from the early 1990s until his death in 2003, the $1.6 billion project designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) features a central skylit hall occupying the space that had originally been the 31,000-square-foot mail sorting room for New York City’s main post office. The enormous Farley Building was designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1913 as an architectural mate to Penn Station, which the firm had designed three years before on the other side of Eighth Avenue between 31st and 33rd streets. The pair of imposing Beaux-Arts buildings represented the grand ambitions of a rapidly growing city asserting itself as the nation’s commercial and cultural capital.
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