Moynihan Moat Hall
“They whistled at it, paraded in it, posed against it, and, for a few moments, forgot themselves. They came to instill civic pride in their kids and remind themselves of all that New York could be. And they left with the satisfaction that comes when your city does something monumental, and does it right.” [1]
On January 1st, we walked from Brooklyn to Penn Station, to experience and celebrate the first day of Moynihan Train Hall. It was the pilgrimage of the architects, the fans of the Farley Building, the train station enthusiasts… We contemplated the great hall with awe and inspiration. We took many pictures. We shared many pictures. And as we left the Station, mid-block, through the Intermodal Hall, onto 31st street, we found ourselves staring into the moat that runs along the South side of the building. And we kept looking at it…
It is a pristine hardscape if you ignore the occasional gratings on the floor. It is neither a plaza nor a sunken garden. It is empty, devoid of any human presence or any life, not due to COVID 19 though, but because of what it is: a moat.
As part of the Moynihan Station Development Project the corner moats on either side of the monumental stairs of the Farley Building facing Eighth Avenue are transformed into at-grade entrances to the Station. The bordering walls of the moats are removed, and the site is regraded. North & South Moats remain. Moynihan Station Development Project Environmental Assessment[2] describes North & South moats to be programmed as retail & restaurant spaces by lowering the moat level to match the concourse level and providing a roof over the moat area. It is unclear how and when this work will be done. Most importantly, how this future intervention will reflect on the character of the moat? Or should it?
After looking at the moat long enough, we headed back to the studio, to reflect on the idea of the moat (including its genesis in military architecture as a defensive strategy), and its appropriateness for a newly minted train station. Should it be erased? Should it be raised-up to the sidewalk level? Should it be converted to a retail/food hall as it is suggested in the Environmental Assessment Report? Or should it be left as is, as it always has been, Moats of Farley?
The question around how to create a new public space where the moat is, led us to an exploration of the ‘moat-ness’ of the moat. How can we transform something that is defensive by nature to be connective? We dug deeper, all the way down to the platform level. The deeper the moat went the more connective it became. It seemed like a new sectional public space can be developed going through the layers below the Concourse. We call it the Moynihan Moat Hall, a sidecar expansion to the Moynihan Train Hall, that creates visual and functional connections between the trains and the train hall. Skylights covering the Moat Hall respond to the rhythm of the historical façade allowing for visual connections between the street level into the train station. The Moat Hall transforms a ‘stand-off’ space into a ‘see-through’ one, x-raying through the fascinating layers that is hidden below.
[1] NY Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/arts/design/moynihan-train-hall.html
[2]Moynihan Station Development Project Environmental Assessment, Chapter 4.2, April 2010 https://cdn.esd.ny.gov/subsidiaries_projects/msdc/Data/NEPA/04_2%20Historic%20Properties.pdf
