Redesigning New York’s front door

SOM has played a central role in reimagining New York City’s Penn Station, the busiest train station in the Western Hemisphere and a hub for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), New Jersey Transit, Amtrak, and two subway lines. SOM’s work spans multiple blocks, from the adaptive reuse of the Farley Building into Moynihan Train Hall, down to the West End Concourse, through the renovated LIRR concourse, and out of the East End Gateway on Seventh Avenue. Together, the projects—which opened between 2017 and 2023—significantly relieve congestion and recapture the grandeur of rail travel to New York.

Marking the station’s entrance

The East End Gateway opened on the final day of 2020, just hours before trains first rolled into Moynihan Train Hall. With its dramatic glass and steel canopy, this new entrance introduces natural light to the underground concourse for the first time since the demolition of the original Penn Station in the 1960s, and establishes a clear entrance to the station on Seventh Avenue.

The gateway connects directly to the LIRR concourses from the street, and nearly doubles the vertical circulation capacity of this segment of the station with three escalators and a staircase. The entrance is set back 130 feet from the curb, making more sidewalk space for crowds and aligning directly with the Empire State Building to create views of the iconic landmark.

These views are framed by a monumental glass and steel canopy, which carries Moynihan Train Hall’s sky-lit aesthetic eastward. The structure, designed and built in collaboration with Skanska, AECOM, and Seele, rises in a gentle convex curve that reaches 40 feet above street level. Pre-tensioned steel cables support the smooth, high-performance glass enclosure. Underground, a map of New York State rings the steel spandrels and situates travelers within the region.

Revamping the LIRR concourse

The renovated concourse, a previously cramped corridor with a coved ceiling, has been nearly doubled in width, from 30 to 57 feet. The ceiling, sitting right below a newly rebuilt block on 33rd Street, now reaches its upper limits at 18 feet, right below the mechanical systems running under the pavement. These improvements have relieved crowding at the Western Hemisphere’s busiest transit hub, and created the space for new signage that makes clear wayfinding at the station now, finally, a possibility.

The signage echoes the aesthetic SOM created for Moynihan Train Hall and the West End Concourse, where color is crucial. Bright yellows identify the tracks, and new video screens across a long series of pillars keep passengers updated no matter where they stand. Green exit signs indicate the egress points, and additional signage throughout the concourse points in the direction of the station’s two subway lines. The renovation also improves safety and ADA access from the street to the concourse with a new elevator on 33rd Street, as well as from the concourse to the platforms with rebuilt stairs and handrails, new enclosures for fire protection, and a replacement elevator.

Creating a new look

The walls of the concourse mix new materials with preserved marble and terracotta surfaces. The yellow elements are all made of porcelain, and the white finishes at the top of the walls are stone. The storefronts were pushed back to widen the concourse, and the pillars that previously stood inside have been re-clad: Two faces on every column now feature mirror-backed glass colored in blue at the bottom until rising, in a gradually changing gradient, to a mirror at the top. The shade of blue is the same color that is used in Moynihan Train Hall, again creating a sense of continuity.

Overhead, the ceiling integrates acoustic baffles and lighting. Metal panels clad the ceiling in front of the stores. Translucent panels, backlit by LED lighting, indicate the concourse’s intersections, where commuters can turn to get to the tracks. Toward Seventh Avenue, the ceiling surrounding the East End Gateway is designed almost entirely in these backlit panels. Across this space, each panel is flat and tilted, mimicking the geometry of Moynihan Train Hall’s skylight.