Penn Station 3.0
By Laurie Lewis
In the past year, most of us have stayed fairly close to home. When you’re ready to venture a little farther and decide to give Amtrak some business, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise if you’re using New York’s Penn Station. For more than fifty years, Penn Station was a crowded, dreary, airless depot. Now you will be entering or leaving the city through the Moynihan Train Hall.
The addition is both new and old. The Moynihan Train Hall, which opened on January 1 of this year, occupies the lower levels of the Farley Post Office, directly across Eighth Avenue from the old Penn Station. Built in 1913 by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White—the firm that built the original Penn Station in 1910 in the same Beaux-Arts style—the post office building has the stately outward appearance of an early twentieth century civic structure. In the interior of the building, in the central space that was once the post office’s main sorting room, a 92-foot-high skylight fills the concourse with light and air. The skylight itself is new, but it is supported by massive steel trusses that were part of the original post office building.
Take a free virtual tour of Penn Station as part of #janeswalknyc. For details, click READ MORE below.
In the past year, most of us have stayed fairly close to home. When you’re ready to venture a little farther and decide to give Amtrak some business, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise if you’re using New York’s Penn Station. For more than fifty years, Penn Station was a crowded, dreary, airless depot. Now you will be entering or leaving the city through the Moynihan Train Hall.
The addition is both new and old. The Moynihan Train Hall, which opened on January 1 of this year, occupies the lower levels of the Farley Post Office, directly across Eighth Avenue from the old Penn Station. Built in 1913 by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White—the firm that built the original Penn Station in 1910 in the same Beaux-Arts style—the post office building has the stately outward appearance of an early twentieth century civic structure. In the interior of the building, in the central space that was once the post office’s main sorting room, a 92-foot-high skylight fills the concourse with light and air. The skylight itself is new, but it is supported by massive steel trusses that were part of the original post office building.
Take a free virtual tour of Penn Station as part of #janeswalknyc. For details, click READ MORE below.
Sample Tours
NYC's Pioneering Achievements
From its earliest days, New York has been home to many creative, inventive people. They introduced an amazing array of innovations that were the first of their kind in the nation, and even the world. Discover many of these firsts in Laurie Lewis's Twitter feed, @LLewisNYCfirsts. Presented like a trivia game, each first usually appears in a tweet on two consecutive days. The first tweet poses a question, such as "Tomorrow is the anniversary of.... Do you know what it is?" The next day, a tweet answers the question. Follow @LLewisNYCfirsts to learn about New York's pioneering achievements.
About "Take a Walk New York" Tours
We are a group of New York City licensed tour guides offering a New York experience that is beyond the standard fare. Let us take you on a walk through the greatest city in the world and discover why New York is a place like no other.
