100 Years of Rail and the Future of Moynihan Station

The city that never sleeps is a busy place. In fact, with 9.5 million annual riders, busy is an understatement. Today, as we acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the James Farley Post Office Building – a building with a strong connection to rail history, we want to take a moment to share our plans for bringing rail back to this iconic New York City location.

The Farley Building opened in 1914, and since then has housed an active post office and at one point, was the intersection of rail and mail. Fast-forward about 75 years to the ’90s when the now late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan sparked discussions about the Farley Building becoming the location for rail expansion in NYC. Years later, his vision is close to becoming a reality.

Designed by the same architects as the original Penn Station (pre-Madison Square Garden), expansion of rail service to the Farley Building would recreate an elegant intercity passenger facility suitable for the busiest station in the nation.

The vision is Moynihan Station, a renovated, bigger and brighter intersection of Northeast Corridor rail transportation. Now under construction, the first phase of the project includes expansion of existing Penn Station concourses at the west end of the station, new entrances to the Farley Building at the corners of 8th Avenue and 31st and 33rd Streets, and important emergency ventilation work. This phase will open to the public in August 2016. The second phase of the project will create a grand train hall in the historic mail sorting room of the Farley Building, moving Amtrak passenger services, ticketing, and baggage check from Penn Station to the Moynihan Station. Once completed, this new facility would provide immediate benefits to not only Amtrak riders and other Penn Station commuters, but would act as a grand civic space in the rapidly developing Far West Side of Manhattan.

For more information about our improvement projects and continued investment along the Northeast Corridor, visit our Northeast Corridor website, nec.amtrak.com.