The new Moenihan Train Hall, unveiled by Governav Cuomo on Wednesday, is a sight to behold – a commemoratively scaled waiting room for Amtrak and LIRR riders who can blink twice. Eye-popping, crowned with a 92૨-foot-high skylight, it is a vision of paradise for injured passengers at the underground Penn Station, the most hated place in the Western world to catch a train.
James A. The Hall, a hilarious donut hole inside the Farley Post Office building, is the center of a $ 1.6 billion planned complex, inside the Farley Building between the streets at 8th and 9th Avenues and west 31 and 33. This will eventually include entrance gags, avenues, subway links, waiting areas, lounges, stores and rest restaurant rents. H Block L and Penn Station One block east, together known as the Pennsylvania Station-Ferley Complex, will have 50 percent more mass space than just a portion of Penn.
Sen in the late 1980s. Daniel Patrick Monihin first dreamed of a grand replacement for the Penn Station, which was shamefully demolished in the 1960s, after three decades of changing plans. Despite the Qwom-Covid-1, it deserves credit for kick-starting and construction this year.
Train Hall Hall, which opens Friday, will ease the rat-structured crowd at the distorted Penn Station below Madison Square Garden, where 650,000 spirits squeeze out of just 250,000 in a space built in 1960. LIRR riders can now board and exit trains at both facilities while Amtrak users will only use the new train hall.
It remains to be seen how well it works until the Raiders ’first, epidemic-thin crush lands next week. But the hall’s mighty roof is sure to hit the public.
At first glance the hall looks smaller than the suggested rendering. It is relatively physical, despite the many expensive marble and wood – except for the great ceiling.
Three monumental steel trusses, remnants of a post-office mail-sorting room, divide an acre of glass roof into four “parabolic” vaults, each containing 500 glasses and steel panels with a web-like design.
It allows more light than the skylight ceiling of the World Trade Center Oculus and Fulton Transit Center. It becomes terrifying when the sun comes out and gives a golden glitter to the whole hall.
But the hall’s incomplete spaces confuse escalators, stairs, lounges and corridors. It’s hard to find a fast way to Eighth Avenue despite the sea of signs. If the “voice of time” had been kept in the old pen station, as the revered writers had called it, Moenihan could have caught the voice of the people as to which way was ahead.
Project architect SOM and politicians consistently make Moninih a mess by comparing the impossible-to-copy original pen station. Sorry, friends, despite the superficial resemblance, it’s not close. Moninihan Hall Hall should be enjoyed for what it is – less than a masterpiece, but an excellent example of “adaptive reuse” architecture and a huge improvement over the pen station that we all love to hate.
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