NEW YORK — Calling ex-U.S. Sen. Patrick Moynihan the creative force behind New York City’s sweeping plans to recreate the famous old Pennsylvania Station, Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday named the Democrat to the agency board that will oversee the project.
A wire service reports that the original Pennsylvania Station was “mindlessly” destroyed in 1963, Moynihan said at a City Hall news conference, though the building, erected from 1905 to 1910, was seen by architects as a jewel from the gilded age.
The station that replaced the old Pennsylvania Station, whose main marble-sheathed waiting room was 150 feet high, has long been derided as a cramped and ugly terminal that the city outgrew many years ago.
Noting 600,000 people each day travel through the current Pennsylvania Station, located in Manhattan’s west midtown, the mayor told City Hall reporters:
“Judging by the constant crowds that go through there, it’s clear Pennsylvania Station just can’t handle the volume any more — not to mention the fact that it’s a dreary, subterranean failure.” The recreated Pennsylvania Station will be able to handle 30 percent more people, according to the mayor.
New York City will not be the only beneficiary, he said, explaining the Northeast relies heavily on Amtrak’s rail service between Boston and Washington — as was borne out when its traffic rose dramatically when planes were grounded after Sept. 11.
Bloomberg, a Republican, on Tuesday also named ex-Rep. Susan Molinari, another Republican, to the board of the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corp.
The city’s plan calls for moving the current Pennsylvania Station across 8th Ave. to the James A. Farley Post Office Building — a magnificent sprawling structure built in 1911 and extended in the 1930s.
Both Moynihan and Bloomberg said the city had the federal funds to go ahead with the ambitious plan. The cost of the overhaul has been estimated at $500 million to nearly $800 million. Some 7,600 people will have to be hired to carry out the renovation, and 1,600 permanent jobs will be created, Bloomberg said.
One stumbling block has been negotiations with the U.S. Post Office, which faced budget constraints and had to find new locations for some of its staff and operations.
Charles Gargano, who chairs the Empire State Development Corp., said he was confident his agency’s talks with the Post Office would be resolved in the early future, saying progress had been made.
The Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corp. whose board Moynihan and Molinari will serve on is part of the Empire State Development Corp.
Diane Todd, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Post Office, told Reuters “We’re moving in the negotiations and things are going well.” The Post Office’s so-called lobby or services for the public will stay in the Farley building, but a number of administrative and other functions will be relocated to other areas in Manhattan.
Moynihan, who also helped Washington, D.C. renovate another Union Station, also a marble architectural masterwork, said: “The Pennsylvania Station was one of the great buildings of the United States of the World,” Moynihan said.
“That it was torn down in 1963, mindlessly, has been with the city for a long while, how could we do that? We now have an opportunity to recreate the building.”