Sunlight is not particularly associated with the sun-bottomed vibe that envelops passengers passing through the pen station.
But natural light spreads through its huge, 92-foot-high skylight ceiling in the new Moyenihan Train Hall and highlights another surprise: standing installations by some of the world’s most famous artists.
Kehinde Ville, Stan Douglas and artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset are the mainstays of the new $ 1.6 billion train hall serving the customers of the Amtrak and Long Island railways, introducing the expansion of the inclusion of Pain Station space. The hub, designed by architecture firm SOM, also connects to subway lines, although it is a short distance away.
Two years after the original Pennsylvania station, in 1912, inside the James A. Farley Postal Building, designed by McKim Mead & White, a 255,000-square-foot train hall, James A. Furley is inside the postal building. (New Yorkers will know the Furley Building by running up its huge stairs to file income tax before midnight April.)
The new hall is named after Senator Daniel P. Reserved for Moynihan, who presented plans for renovations in the early 1990s, but was delayed for years. The driver behind the project is Governance, Andrew M. Kumomo announced in 2016 a public-private partnership for the development of the halls, including Empire State Development, Vornado Realty Trust, related companies, Scans Nasca and others.
The Moynihan Train Hall serves as the kind of redemption for Doom Penn Station, which is considered very dangerous for the city’s historic buildings, which have kicked off the fictional national defense movement.
The new hall has failed to solve many of New York’s many transportation problems – congestion on the tracks, the need for a new tunnel under the Hudson River, the ambiguity of the Penn Station, to name a few. But officials say it is a necessary step to complete other transportation projects, add more train capacity and ease congestion at Penn Station.
Train halls open at a time when citizens are being told to stay away from irregular travel to limit the spread of coronavirus, and at a time when commuters have very little traffic.
But despite the epidemic, the governor has pointed to the achievement of timely delivery of a major infrastructure project beyond the Covid-era era. Mr Kumo called the new hall “deeply optimistic”.
“It speaks for the bright days ahead when we’ll be able to get together, pass each other and share the same space fearlessly,” Mr. Kumo said. “It promises the renewal and rebirth of civic life in New York, and it points to the next opportunity.”
The completion of the project – a station to welcome travelers and bring the rest of the world to New York – serves as a bright spot for New York City at the end of a dark year where deaths due to global epidemics are on the rise in spring and re-stimulation, and viruses hit the local economy. Many favorite restaurants and shops have closed on delivery.
On a recent trip to the hall of the train, the workers were putting the final touches on the blue curved benches in the alcove sitting in the ticketed waiting area. The radiant flooring of the hall feels warm to the touch, and, at least for now, the sparkling is clean. Majestic trusses and vaulted skylights allowed grand treasures in the original intercourse of the pen station. The hall offers free Wi-Fi and a lounge for nursing mothers. A 12-foot-tall clock with a typeface designed for road and railroad signs, reminiscent of a broken pen station clock. Designed as a meeting point, it hangs 25 feet above the floor.
Construction of the new hall began in 2017 with the attractive restoration of the 200,000-square-foot stone facade of the landmark building, its 700 windows, copper roof, steel traces and terra-cotta cornices. Some of the 120,000 square feet of shopping, dining and retail space will not be ready right now. The train hall will not take up all the space of the building; The post office fee is still working. Facebook is moving forward as a major merchant tenant.
While the new hall will offer a more welcoming welcome to passengers than the grandeur of the star-sealed main hall of the Grand Central Terminal, called “La Guardia of Train Stations”. ”
Adding work by well-known artists adds a celebratory vibe, a sense of pride to the public sphere and a method. Mr. Kumo has preferred the Second Avenue subway line (with pieces by Chuck Close) at the same transit point at four stations. Jean Shin, Vic Muniz and Sarah Sj) and a new Terminal B at La Guardia Airport, with the establishment of Mrs. Sz, Laura Owens, Sabin Hornig and Ljppi Han.
“This is something we collectively believe in, to say the least about the society around the artist, around his vision,” said Mr. Ville, known for his portraits of former President Barack Obama. National Portrait Gallery. “New York needs this right now.”
The space always seems to be aimed at finding travelers, from its expanding glass skylights to the two main roof installations at each entrance – stained glass paintings by break dancers on Mr. Villaney’s 33rd Street and Elmgreen & Dragset’s “The Hive,” cluster. Up-to-date models of future skyscrapers, at 31st Street.
“This is an opportunity for artists to lengthen themselves and do something new and different,” said Nicholas Baume, director and chief curator of the Public Art Fund overseeing the art project.
The artists submitted their proposals in 2019, before any of them imagined the Covid-19, spread around the world, and then ran their pieces from afar. The cost of these installations is less than 8 8 million.
Here’s a look at the artists and their projects.
Kehinde Ville
Mr Willie’s backlight, hand-painted, stained glass tripod, called “Go”, shows sneaker-clad break dancers floating in the blue sky at the top of the 33rd Street entrance.
The artist, whose paintings often visualize well-known works with black themes, said he wanted to acknowledge the rarity of contemporary art on stained glass, as well as “play with the language of ceiling frescoes” using its installation to celebrate black culture.
Mr Ville, who owns a studio in New York but spends most of his years in his studio in Dakor, Senegal, said: “I thought more about the movement and the ways to bend the body into a break dance instead.”
A woman wears baggy yellow pants and a crop top; Dressed in another denim jacket. Instead of angels and deities in classical frescoes, Mr. Ville gives the Nike logo and pigeons in midflight. The extended finger of a young woman in shorts hidden by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Simot Chapel creates images of “Creation Adam Dum”.
“It’s an idea to express amazing joy – to break the dance in the sky,” he said, adding that the break dance began in New York City.
Mr. Ville visited the train hall, taking note of the decorative nail and metal work. The molding around the three panels was made to coordinate with the metal around the exterior windows of the building.
Mr Ville said he had strayed from the usual method of “street casting” or to pick strangers from the street as models, as he had been forced for time to deliver work and instead turned to the subjects of previous paintings.
“The aesthetic of black culture is aesthetics of survival, exhilaration and fierceness, and the ability to swim in between,” Mr Ville added, adding that he hopes the work will stop travelers and make them smile.
“And I hope they recognize themselves.” “I wanted to build on the intersection of trade, commerce and transportation in the capital of the world economy, which sits in praise of the black potential.”
Stan Douglas
Large photographic panels by Canadian Mr. Douglas, whose work connects local history to the wider social movement, serve as a backdrop with a 0-foot wall of waiting area for ticketed passengers. The “Half a Century of Pen Station” series is a tribute to the original Pen Station, in which Mr. Douglas drew on research to recreate nine small but significant moments there.
Mr Douglas, who is representing Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2022, invited 100-400 people each day of the shooting to the empty hockey key area in Van Nouakchott, where they were dressed in period costumes and separated from each other. He simultaneously tanked numerous images on the digital recreated interior of the station, which he remodeled based on old floor plans and photos.
The panels include excerpts and depictions of folk hero Celia Cooney, also known as “Bobbed Hair Bandit,” who met the mob in 1924 when she returned to New York to face charges. Mr. Douglas also came up with a new idea for a pen station for Vincent Minelli’s 1945 film The Clock, starring Jun Garland.
A hilarious image recreates the very moments of New York: a spontaneous display put up by Woodville artists inside the hall after a major blizzard in 1914 trapped them and other passengers. It was led by black singer and comedian Bert Williams, who also produced leading musicals. Theater productions.
“This is a complete fantasy – we don’t know what it looked like,” Mr. Douglas said of his scene. “We found out who was doing the show on the East Coast and included them. We found reference images for the acrobatic troupes and costumes of the era and their works. “
The epidemic turned Mr. Douglas.
Each model was masked until the moment before the shutter clicked. And everyone was photographed individually, even for large crowd scenes, then the images layered on top of each other.
Mr. Douglas said one person passed, but Covid-19 was not involved for everyone’s relief. “He was dressed in winter clothes on July day.”
Elmgreen and Dragset
Michael Elmgreen and Inger Dragset, Berlin-based artists whose work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design, created “The Hive”, a set of nine-foot-tall models of skyscrapers that hung like side latches from the ceiling. At the entrance to 31st Street.
Polished, white buildings, some replicas and some perfectly fantasy, with their perfect edges and small lights seem futuristic. The artist base allows passengers to be projected into the cityscape and create a kind of mirage of an imaginary city, the artists explained.
“It’s an important aspect of this, that people reflect themselves in the base plate,” Mr. Dragset said. “We like that there’s just an interaction between the audience and the work.”
Mr Dragset said the work was named “The Hive” to show how cities work with the richness of their diversity because people accept certain rules for coexistence.
“It’s about a huge collaboration to keep everyone alive,” he said.
The installation includes about 100 buildings, most of which are made of aluminum, which the artists hope will give passengers a new experience whenever they enter.
“People rush in a lot when they get on the train,” Mr. Elmgren said. “We thought of creating something that would make sense to you in a single scene, but if you want to get the full experience, you can hang out and Discover new aspects of artwork again. “
The display includes 72,000 LED lights; Six buildings can change color.
Carrying the work from Germany to New York, where it was crafted, was nerve-racking, the artists said. Together, the buildings weigh more than 30,000 pounds. Mr. Dragset was the only artist in the four who was able to travel to New York this month to oversee the installation.
He said, “I saw it come together and come together and the lights were coming for this magical moment.” “Both me and my product manager, we shed a few tears.”
