New Years Day will mark a new day for New York City’s venerable Penn Station with the opening of its Moynihan Train Hall, carved out of an ornate former Post Office Building across the street from the now-entirely-underground station.
Since 1963, when the original Penn Station, a widely-admired building based on Rome’s Baths of Caracalla was torn down to make room for Madison Square Garden and a clutch of office buildings, Penn Station has existed only as a maze of underground passages and spaces, while rail traffic and especially commuter rail has swamped the space.
The new train hall, sitting above the tunnels feeding the station, includes a massive glass-roofed waiting and services area, formerly the courtyard of the James A. Farley Post Office building, which was originally designed as a near-twin for Penn Station, and by the same architects, McKim Mead and White.
While the new facility will add more platform space and amenities for Amtrak and New Jersey Transit, the two railroads that will be based there, it does not add more tracks; that awaits a plan by New York Gov. Cuomo to take over a square block south of the new hall to add an additional eight tracks.
In the meantime, Amtrak and NJT trains will use the platforms under the Moynihan hall, while the Long Island Railroad will use platforms on the same tracks, but under the old Penn Station site. Only Amtrak’s trains will actually pass under the whole station as they connect New York and Washington.
