Moynihan Train Hall Is Only a Start. But at Least We’re Starting.

A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines. [Curbed]( WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30 Street View [Penn Station’s New Train Hall Is Only a Start. But at Least We’re Starting.]( A grand entrance to a rail system that needs much more.   Photo: Lucas Blair Simpson © SOM   Sometimes Godot shows up. We’ve been talking about Moynihan Station for so long — [27 years, to be exact]( — that setting foot on the new train hall’s freshly laid Tennessee marble floors seems like one more hallucinatory experience at the end of an implausible year. Look up and you’re staring at daylight, which wavers and bends on its way through the ceiling’s glass vaults. Squint at one of the dozens of digital screens where departure times appear with icy clarity, and you half expect a boarding call for the Polar Express rather than, say, Ronkonkoma. Moynihan Train Hall is real, all right, though it’s not actually a station — more of a grand waiting room for Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad dropped into the center of the doughnutlike Farley Post Office Building. Its primary purpose is to improve upon the experience of leaving or entering Manhattan through Penn Station, a bar so low it’s buried in the basement. On that score, the $1.6 billion building succeeds. More ambitiously, the new room aims to evoke, maybe even revive, the romance of travel by rail. And yet this long-delayed mash-up of spectacle and missed opportunity doesn’t make the heart go clickety-clack. [Continue reading »](     Last chance! [Save 60% on Curbed.](     [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( The Latest [I for One Will Miss the 70 Duane Reades That Closed This Year And the city’s 26 Jimmy Jazzes and 43 Modell’s. A wistful look at a new “State of the Chains” report.]( [No, de Blasio Is Not Trying to Crush the Hotel Industry He’s planning for the long term at the expense of the quick fix — while doing the unions a favor in the process.]( [Zoox Is Only Barely a Car, and That’s Its Most Promising Feature The driverless dream works better when it’s shared.]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Read More From Curbed](     [Subscribe to New York]( [Subscribe to New York](   Ends soon! Subscribe for 60% off and getunlimited access]( more great stories from New York, home of Intelligencer, the Cut, Vulture, Curbed, Grub Street, and the Strategist. [SUBSCRIBE NOW](     [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe](param=curbed)   |   [privacy notice](   |   [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on e-mail newsletters please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 11th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2020, All rights reserved