PHOTOS: See Moynihan Train Hall’s massive skylight being installed
After starting construction last summer, Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM)‘s reimagined Moynihan Train Hall is now beginning to take shape. Part of Governor Cuomo’s Empire Station Complex revamp of Penn Station, the old James A. Farley Post Office will be transformed into a crystal palace-esque boarding concourse with a 92-foot high skylight atop the 1913 building’s original steel trusses. CityRealty recently got an exclusive aerial look at how construction is progressing on the glass skylights ahead of the Train Hall’s anticipated 2020 opening.
Renderings via SOM
The massive 255,000-square-foot mail sorting room is being transformed into a new boarding concourse to aid in the reduction of congestion and to modernize Penn Station into a 21st-century train station, increasing Penn Station’s total concourse floor space by more than 50 percent.
Renderings via SOM
The one-acre skylight will soar 92 feet and top the main Train Hall, which will service all LIRR and Amtrak trains via 11 escalators and seven elevators to nine platforms and 17 tracks. It will also link up with the Eighth Avenue Subway and connect to Penn Station across 8th Avenue.
Renderings via SOM
It will be larger than Grand Central’s main concourse, and it will offer 70,000 square feet of new commercial, retail, and dining spaces along its second-story mezzanine.
Construction shots from June 2018 via CityRealty
In April, we reported that Vornado Realty Trust and Related Companies hope to attract tech companies to the post office, specifically biotechnology and pharmaceutical businesses as tenants. The team hired a Boston-based broker with life sciences experience created a brochure to lure those laboratory-loving folks entitled “Moynihan Research Center at Farley.”
Last June, Governor Cuomo said in a press announcement, “The Farley Building’s Moynihan Train Hall is two decades in the making, and we are proud that this project is finally a reality. With better access to trains and subways and state-of-the-art infrastructure, the Moynihan Train Hall seamlessly joins history, architectural design, and function, bringing the nation’s busiest rail station into the 21st century.”
[Via CityRealty]
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