On 01/01/2021 the new Moynihan Train Hall for inter-city and local rail traffic opened in the heart of New York City. For this important infrastructure project, the historic James A. Farley Post Office building was fundamentally remodelled, although the existing building had to be preserved. Situated in Manhattan, the new station was built to serve as a concourse to the nearby Pennsylvania Station and thus create more capacity for the growing number of passengers, which are currently more than 650,000 daily.
Cover image: Lucas Blair Simpson © Empire State Development | SOM
For this project, seele carried out the three free-form roof structures with an aluminium-glass skin above the structural steelwork.
The roof over the train hall is formed by four 16m wide curving barrel vaults that cover a total area of about 3,000sqm. Restaurants and retail surround a hall with an area of 1,044sqm at the midblock entrances, underneath one of the smaller of the project’s glass roofs. The third roof structure, the Farley Skylight, has a surface of approx. 390sqm and a lower inside micrometer.
The roof structures join up with the existing steel structure and consist of a gridshell of welded steel T-sections with tensioned cables. Separate aluminium-and-glass elements are fitted into the gridshell structure. A total of 3,384 insulating glass units and 670t of steel were required for the structures.
seele’s contract also included the design and build of two true to scale mock-ups, which were required for visual and performance tests and were completed in 2018. Every component and element at Moynihan Train Hall is a one-off. Such diversification required highly precise planning and execution right across design, production, logistics and installation.
Video and text courtesy of seele