Moynihan Train Hall Clock

Moynihan Train Hall Clock

Through the Empire State Development Corporation, and Governor Cuomo’s office, PPA was awarded the commission to design the clock for the new Moynihan Train Hall, a space reimagined by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as a vital transportation hub within McKim, Mead & White’s historic Farley Post Office Building. The conversion of the Post Office into a new extension of Penn Station was the vision of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Train Hall’s namesake, who first introduced plans for a renovation in the early 1990s. 

PPA’s 12-foot-tall clock was inspired by the machined angles found in designs from the golden age of railroad travel and evokes the best of Art Deco, a modern classical style emblematic of the Jazz Age in New York City. The ribbed case with echeloned extensions is a nod to the stepped forms and continuous vertical folds of Jazz Age and Art Deco skyscrapers and is presented in a luminous pewter-like finish that reflects the ever-changing natural light spilling through SOM’s monumental glass skylight. PPA worked in collaboration with Hyde Park Mouldings who fabricated the clock out of GFRG panels attached to a steel frame and coordinated with Americlock on the structure and internal mechanisms.  The clock face, with numbers set in a typeface designed in 1936 for road and railroad signage, pays tribute to the history of New York and a decade considered to be the golden age of American rail travel.

Project Director: Colin Richardson

Design: Steven Worthington

3D Production Manager: Phil Davis

BIM Director: Colin Slaten

Client: Empire State Development Corporation

Client’s Representative: WSP

Construction Manager: SKANSKA

Project Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Clock Graphic Design: Dyad Communications

Clock Body and Finishing: Hyde Park Mouldings

Clockworks and Clock Faces: Americlock


Peter Pennoyer Architects