NEWS: Regarding Moynihan Station, nee Farley Post Office
Farley Post Office gets makeover for new role
By Jacqui Gal
Special to amNewYork
http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-post0627,0,6083159.story
Shrouded in a giant safety net, the facade of the 92-year-old James A. Farley Post Office is quietly getting a makeover as the building prepares for its new role as Penn Station’s successor.”The work that is going on now is not the beginning of construction of the station, but maintenance of a magnificent building,” said Charles Gargano, chairman of Empire State Development Corp., which will complete the conversion.”We are preparing for construction on the inside, but we certainly want to maintain the building in the best possible condition.”Workers are now cleaning, repairing and waterproofing the 43,000 square feet of granite facade and 21 Corinthian columns of what will become Moynihan Station. The windows are being restored, and external wiring and lights are being upgraded. The building will even be bird-proofed.
The facade restoration should be done by the fall, with additional work on the station expected around then. It should be completed by 2012.The Beaux Arts building was completed in 1914. The back of the building was finished 20 years later. A private proposal to turn that portion of the building into a new Madison Square Garden is being advanced. Gargano has said plans for Moynihan Staion will move ahead.One feature that is sure to gleam more brightly come the fall is the Eight Avenue facade’s famous inscription: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”Under the current plan, the building will continue to house, albeit somewhat dimished, a postal bureau. Sometimes mistaken as the official motto of the Unites States Postal Service, a version of the quote is attributed to the Greek historian Herodotus.
But in name if not yet function, the Moynihan Station era has already arrived.”People upstairs in the [post office] administration had been told not to call it the James Farley Post Office,” said sales service associate William Kareem, who works in the building.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.