Posted on 07/25/2005 7:20:31 PM PDT by Sam Cree
NEW YORK – After years of delay, New York City, the state and two big developers are on board with a design to turn the city’s post office on Eighth Ave. into a grand transit hub recalling the elegant Pennsylvania Station that was razed in 1963, according to a story in the New York Daily News.
The $818 million plan will preserve the handsome facade of the James A. Farley Post Office, erected in 1913, while adapting the building as the new Daniel Patrick Moynihan Station, to honor the late U.S. senator, who pushed hard for the idea. The Post Office building is directly across Eighth Avenue from the current Penn Station beneath Madison Square Garden.
"This is going to be a magnificent gateway for New York," Gov. Pataki said at the unveiling of the design, which also calls for shops, restaurants and a boutique hotel. Pataki noted that more than 500,000 subway, NJ Transit, Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak riders a day use the subterranean Penn Station. He called the current location "horribly inadequate." It's "certainly not an appropriate gateway to the greatest city in the world," he added.
As envisioned by James Carpenter Design Associates, in collaboration with Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, the proposed new central hall will mirror the old Penn Station through the addition of tall, steel arches on which will sit a huge, yet lightweight, skylight. A second, so-called "grid shell skylight" will be set atop a hall to be located roughly in the middle of the building, between Eighth and Ninth avenues that will serve as a taxi station and baggage drop-off.
The winning plan for the project was submitted by a team of major New York developers, The Related Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust, which has extensive holdings in the area. The companies will put up about $300 million of the projected $818 million cost at different stages before the work is completed in 2010. The city, state and federal governments and the Port Authority are also helping to fund the project, whose main transit beneficiary will be NJ Transit trains. The Postal Service will occupy 250,000 square feet of the complex.
Considering the nightmare that protecting the current Penn Station from terrorists must be, I wonder how they will manage that concern here.
I'll always want to refer to it as "Penn" Station, regardless of its actual name.
I'll always want to refer to it as "Penn" Station, regardless of its actual name.
But some folks, I hear, don't like it. You might say they dis Penn Station.
Pataki should quit while he's behind. Milktoast.
The destruction of the magnificent original Penn Station, and its replacement with the prison-like monstrosity that sits there now, was one of the worst acts of civic barbarism ever committed by a city government. That was the dark age of urban architecture. Fortunately, such a blatant act of vandalism did make it tougher when people later wanted to tear down Carnegie Hall and Grand Central Terminal, among others. Tearing down the present Penn Station will be a pleasure.
I think its a dumb idea. Penn Station works just fine. They are going to spend $800 million so that we can all say "Gee, isn't it so nice having a pretty train station" when it doesn't work any better than the current one.
How about this: Sell the damn building and let a business pay taxes on the property.
"Pataki should quit while he's behind. Milktoast."
Sigh!
Your pun rocked. dispennstation...
Isn't it right across the street from the current station?
Isn't it right across the street from the current station?
I'm going to have to hurt you now.
That's assuming that New Yorkers no longer want train service, unlikely considering that Penn Station's main use is for commuters from up and down state,Long Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. However, your comment is equally apropos to municipal airports, I think.
You should hear them railing about it. Diesel not be the last words on this matter.
I always cringe when I'm in Penn Station and see the posters of the beautiful old station. The old one for instance, looked like it was pretty much self ventilated for one thing, though I'll have to research that one.
No, Penn station currently exists entirely underground. What they are talking about doing here is taking over an old post office building so that they can have a train station that "looks nice".
Sam, I always thought it was in poor taste for them to have the gall to show what was torn down while you're sitting in that subterranean cell. Rubbing salt in the wounds. The old Penn Station was a beautiful architectural landmark.
One long block away.
And in the wrong direction.
The current Penn station is in an out of the way place to begin with.
Not midtown and not downtown.
Unlike Grand Central Terminal, Most Penn Station commuters who work in midtown have to hop one or more buses and subways to get to their offices or walk a half mile or more.
Moving the station more to the west is moving it even further away from where people are going--and one l-o-n-g block further away from everything if you like to walk.
Hey, I like architecture--and the Farley post office is a nice building for something so grotesquely huge.
But I'd rather see them move Penn station to midtown or downtown, even if they have to put it in an old warehouse to do it.
P.S. While I bemoan the demolition of so many of Manhattan's beautiful old buildings--I cannot understand why so many people morn the demolition of the old Penn station--which with its ungainly looking skylight always seemed a white elephant to me.
Although what they built in its place is even uglier.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.