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The demolition of McKim, Meade & White’s original Pennsylvania Station in 1963 provoked historian Vincent Scully to write “One entered the city like a god. One now scuttles in like a rat.” Fifty years later, a Beaux Arts landmark by the same architects, the Farley Post Office, will become the West Side’s newest train hall. Project improvements broke ground last October and the transformation of the post office into a transit hub is set to be completed by 2016.

On February 23, the Forum for Urban Design hosted a behind-the-scenes tour of the Beaux Arts post office and the future Moynihan Station project. Tim Gilchrist, President of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, guided thirty members through the future train hall and gave them a preview of the project’s vision. The tour continued through the Farley Building, where former mail sorting facilities, office space, and loading docks will soon be transformed into the grand commercial and public space that Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has envisioned for New York’s newest transportation center.