A True Destination at Moynihan Train Hall

March 2021

The Midtown West neighborhood just south of 555TEN’s luxury rentals has recently experienced a lot of exciting, future-forward changes. In just the last 15 years, the High Line broke ground and evolved from an intriguing idea into a model for modern urban parks around the world. Meanwhile, the new Hudson Yards features many public attractions, including 14 acres of plazas and green spaces. Now the neighborhood boasts a transportation hub worthy of its sophisticated and increasingly international audience: the Moynihan Train Hall. And it’s within easy (15-minute) walking distance for residents of 555TEN who are traveling light.

The Moynihan Train Hall, named after New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who began promoting its construction in the 1990s, has been a long time coming, and it literally builds on some of the area’s most beautiful architecture. The historic grandeur of the original Pennsylvania Station, designed in 1910 by “legendary” architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, is, in fact, the subject of a permanent glass-wall photography exhibit in Moynihan Train Hall called Penn Station’s Half Century. The new hall, which connects to the current Pennsylvania Station, regains the glory of that first station via a redesign by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of the Beaux-Arts James A. Farley Building (also originally by McKim, Mead & White) that served as the city’s main post office for more than a century.

The new concourse’s 92-foot-tall skylight, with a huge four-faced clock hanging from the center, will dazzle and energize travelers. Also suspended from the ceiling is a sculptural homage to skyscrapers, The Hive by Elmgreen and Dragset. Go by Kehinde Wiley captures the movement of New York through illuminated stained-glass renderings that evoke the spirit of breakdancing, a fundamentally New York art form.

While clearly in graceful competition (or conversation) with Grand Central Station on the East Side of the city, this extension of the West Side’s train hub is also a practical accomplishment that doubles the size of the concourse space. Not only is the ambitious hall a recognition of the renaissance of rail travel as part of a sustainable regional and national transportation network, but it is a “beta test for adaptive reuse projects in the LEED for Transit category” of the United States Green Building Council. A food hall is scheduled to open later in the year, offering a touch of day-to-day comfort in the impressive surroundings. There’s even free Wi-Fi to make waiting more productive.

How easy—and now how exhilarating—it is to pack a few things in your Midtown Manhattan apartment at 555TEN and head out for a weekend on Long Island or possibly a longer trip (all points Amtrak) from Moynihan Train Hall! And, if you’re not living at 555TEN yet, you should contact us ASAP for a 21st-century upgrade to your lifestyle itinerary, just up the street from “the” station.