"It was controlled by a bunch of rich developers," David Gunn once said of Moynihan Station.

David Gunn was never a fan of Moynihan Station. When he was president of Amtrak during the early George W. Bush years, he pulled the railroad out of the project, which seeks to recreate the glory of the old Pennsylvania Station in the James Farley Post Office across Eighth Avenue. At the time, costs were the stated reason: Amtrak was expected to contribute to its new home, and Mr. Gunn said that the railroad had more pressing needs.

Current Amtrak President Joseph Boardman picked the project back up in 2009, and though it's largely unfunded, Amtrak still intends to go through with the move. This, Mr. Gunn told The Observer this afternoon from his home in Nova Scotia, would be a mistake.

"From a transportation point of view," Mr. Gunn said, "it makes no sense." For passengers coming from the 1/2/3 trains, "what the Farley Building does, is make you walk from Seventh Avenue all the way across Eighth Avenue. You'll have to go under the Eighth Avenue subway, then climb up to the [new] head house, which is to the west of Eighth Avenue, over towards Ninth Avenue. And then, you walk back to where the train is! The trains are still going to be between Seventh and Eighth avenues." For passengers arriving at Moynihan Station via the IRT Seventh Avenue Line, Mr. Gunn said, "they've gotta walk almost a mile." (By our estimates, a mile might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the schlep across Manhattan's long avenues won't be negligible.)

"Now the swells"—Mr. Gunn's term for the real estate interests backing Moynihan Station, including the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust—"they told me, 'But people come by cab!' No they don't—Amtrak passengers, a lot of them, come by subway. They're normal people."

Mr. Gunn, who has managed transit agencies in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Toronto, noted that New Jersey Transit built a concourse in 2002 that empties out on Seventh Avenue, reflecting its closer proximity to Manhattan's center of gravity and most of its north-south subway lines.

One way to accomodate the head house at the old Farley Post Office, Mr. Gunn said, without forcing travelers from Seventh Avenue to double back across Eighth Avenue, would be to simply continue to allow passengers to board at the current station. "But they didn't want us to let people on at the old Penn Station, because I think the real estate developers had shops they wanted people to patronize at the Farley head house." (Since then, Related and Vornado have themselves wavered on the retail plan, citing a lack of demand.)

"You ask the swells why it makes sense," continued Mr. Gunn, "and they'll immediately talk about the experience of walking through the [Moynihan] head house. Real travelers—they know the back alleys. Some of the really experienced travelers, they never even go up the mezzanine. They just want to get on the train."

Moynihan Station will testify to the senator’s fidelity to both the commonplace functionality of public transportation and the grand aspirations of civic architecture. He rescued not only this railroad hub, but also the national capital’s Union Station. Nothing was too slight for this very big man’s attentions, neither the Smithsonian Institution nor this city’s Botanical Gardens nor Cooperstown, where he believably feigned an interest in baseball. 

Moynihan’s Moment, the new book by the deep and graceful historian Gil Troy ($29.95; Oxford University Press), is about Pat’s singular struggle against the rancid anti-Semitism embedded in the United Nations, once thought of as the world’s “last best hope for peace.” Alas, that world is no longer Eleanor Roosevelt’s universe of good intentions. Factually and structurally, the U.N. is now set up in two ways for grand fibbing. The Security Council is governed by the veto privilege of its five permanent members.

Do you want to know why nothing ever was done against the genocide in Sudan or, for that matter, in any other African country? Any measure that could have curbed the slaughter would have been nullified by a Russian or Chinese veto, probably both. The General Assembly, on the other hand, is a mob scene, like the Durban conferences convened by the U.N. Human Rights Council and its equally mendacious predecessor. It is, in effect, just another venue for the Nonaligned Movement, which has 120 members, all of them represented in the U.N. and almost all of them voting as one. Mohamed Morsi was last year’s chairperson of the NAM; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is this year’s. Chairperson, shmairperson: no woman has ever served.

The November 10, 1975, vote of the General Assembly declaring that “Zionism is racism” was a foregone conclusion. So foregone that, as Mr. Troy explains, it led the Soviet bloc and its odd alliance of some 50 Muslim states—monarchies, “revolutionary republics” and just plain klepto-murderous gangs—to contemplate throwing Israel out of the U.N. altogether. Ultimately, they settled for their umpteenth rhetorical triumph, which accomplished literally nothing for the miserable Palestinians. Of course, the Palestinians have counted for nearly zero in the calculations of their Muslim brothers, and for less than zero in the arbitrage of their mischievous comrades, whose game was less to punish Israel than to encircle the United States with the anger of its beneficiaries and putative clients.

Mr. Moynihan understood this convoluted chess game, and he trounced the Arabs and their cynical Communist patrons with the straightforward eloquence for which he was beloved. Mr. Troy captures nearly every moment of the intra-bureaucratic American struggle for Ronald Reagan’s soul. Henry Kissinger, who clearly did not like Mr. Moynihan, connived against him.

And many others, like J. William Fulbright, actually an embittered but haughty anti-black racist, New York Timesman James Reston and a large cohort of diplomat-professors like Columbia’s Richard Gardner and Princeton’s Richard Falk, an anti-Semitic Jew now in the career service of the Human Rights Council, all of whom did not especially like Mr. Kissinger either—he was a pushy Jew, an arrogant intellectual and, oh, yes, Vietnam and Chile—came down on Mr. Moynihan from the internationalist left. (In 1969, I went to see Mr. Fulbright and his wife in the Senate dining room on behalf of the children of Biafra. He came directly to the point: “Why, for God’s sake, are you interested in these pickaninnies?”)

In any case, no one had really gauged the deep and abiding racism of those governments and societies that were so eager to accuse Israel of racism. As it happens, there was hardly a government in the anti-Israel swarm that was not deeply racist. And they are sanguinely racist still: Russia, China, each and every one of the Arab countries, and most of Asia and Africa. This was the prosecution, and this is the prosecution still.

U.N. Resolution 3379 was ultimately revoked 16 years later. But the bitter fact is that the repudiation of the libel was little more than symbolic. Condemnation of Israel is still a reflex, sometimes noticed, sometimes not. Palestinian “victories” in the Assembly bring no political or economic relief to these orphan Arabs. Those who fight for them on New York’s East River are indifferent to their fate, the anger mustered against the Jews a disguise of their disdain and heedlessness.

So Palestine is now a United Nations non-member state, comparable only to the Vatican. Moreover, the fratricide in Syria, the civil war in Egypt, the coming erosion of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, the ongoing inter-sectarian murder in Iraq, the escalating carnage in Yemen, the breakup of Lebanon and the religious wars in Africa are all portents of the evaporation of the Muslim center. It may be disguised by oil wealth. But not for long. And, let’s face it, the petro-monarchs do not govern integral societies. Their wealth is not at home but in London, New York and Beijing.

This book is a highly sophisticated intellectual history of liberal America in the last decades of the 20th century. Mr. Moynihan was a major actor in this history, as well as one of its great interpreters. So, too, was that epitome of complicated honesty, Nathan Glazer, who was Pat’s partner in the writing of Beyond the Melting Pot, a disturbing narrative picture of race and ethnicity in America. Resentment against the truths in this book spilled over into the hatred that the mere mention of Mr. Moynihan’s name sometimes provoked in the self-defined thought capitols of the country.

But Pat was intrepid, knowing when he was stepping into a shitstorm. Like when he ran against Bella Abzug, Paul O’Dwyer (Mayor Bill O’Dwyer’s deep-lefty brother) and Ramsey Clark (LBJ’s attorney general), who was just then entering his nutsy period, pronouncing America as guilty of trying at once to rule and destroy the world. Mr. Moynihan was adept in the political arena. He was a brilliant teacher. He was also a diplomat who, with his wife Liz, charmed India and virtually single-handedly persuaded New Delhi that a better destiny lay with the democracies.

As for the Jews and the Jewish state, Pat grasped the romance of Zionism, its unprecedented revival of Hebrew as a living language, its pioneering esprit, its treacherous experience with Arabs, its transformation of a dispersed people into a modern and democratic polity. Some aspects of the rancor Israel provokes are envy, incompetence and historical hatred, much of it located in the church to which he was faithful. But nothing matches Islam’s hatred of Zion, and Gil Troy captures its resentment at its sad and self-defeating worst.

Marty Peretz is the former editor in chief of The New Republic.

Could development finally be coming to the long-stalled project?

The planned conversion of the Beaux-Arts Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue into Amtrak's "Moynihan Station" has always been more about real estate and architecture than transportation, spurred by the city's desperate search for atonement after the destruction of the old Penn Station. Former Amtrak President David Gunn didn't mince words when he told Bloomberg News in 2011 that the project is "controlled by a bunch of rich developers."

And Related Companies doesn't seem to be doing anything to disabuse us of that notion. The New York Times reported that Stephen Ross has yet another trick up his sleeve to revive the stalled project: he wants the Borough of Manhattan Community College to move into Moynihan Station.

But Related isn't just looking for an anchor tenant for Moynihan—it also wants BMCC's land in Tribeca.

"Under the proposal by the developer," The Times writes, "the community college would move 3.8 miles north of its current location downtown to 1.1 million square feet of space in the post office building," where it would serve as the would-be complex's anchor tenant.

This would be an upgrade from BMCC's 780,000 square feet between Chambers Street and North Moore Street fronting on West Street, but this extra space would be dwarfed by Related's haul, should the plan pan out: BMCC's site sits on nearly a quarter of a million square feet of land, the majority of which has an unimpeded view of the Hudson River. With a 20 percent bonus for affordable housing or a public plaza, the current zoning would allow the site's owners to build 2.7 million square feet of space—slightly larger than 4 WTC, as a comparison.

Related may be able to count on the support of New York's civic elite, who are eager to see Moynihan Station come to life—Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association seemed to endorse the deal if it would get Moynihan back on track—but BMCC doesn't appear to have much interest in the project, especially since it would mean leaving their $325 million, newly-built Fiterman Hall. Plus, there's a slight legal barrier to overcome: "It was also unclear how the school could legally swap the land without going through an auction," The Times writes. Unnamed "government officials" told The Times that Related should stick to retail and office tenants, suggesting Google as a possibility.

But Mr. Ross remains undeterred, and Related is reportedly taking the issue directly to Governor Andrew Cuomo, perhaps seeking to appeal to his edifice complex.

ssmith@observer.com

Alicia Keys eyes the Edun collection. (PMc)

It’s not every day that you discover a makeshift organic fruit and cider farmer’s market stand outside a fashion show. But that’s precisely what had been constructed outside Skylight at Moynihan Station at EDUN’s spring 2013 runway presentation this past Saturday afternoon. Breezy Hill Orchards of Staatsburg, New York was stocked with the dozens of varietals of pears and apples freshly picked. Before the show, sweaty fashion editors, stylists and buyers could take a refreshing sip of apple cider. It was a smart pairing considering that Edun, which was founded by Ali Hewson and U2’s Bono, works with African manufacturers to give them an economic boost. Naturally the majority of attendees beelined it to their seats, but The Observer gulped down a bottle before the show.

Seating was a bit frenzied and the arrival of songstress Alicia Keys didn’t help, but eventually we took in the Mali and safari-chic theme of Edun creative director Sharon Wauchob’s collection, with etched florals, mud-dyed cotton and silk and military accents.

"At Edun we believe that real style has substance. We founded the company to bring trade to Africa,” explained Ms. Hewson. “This season we are proud to say we are on track to reach our goal of producing 40 percent of the collection in Africa."

Commerce-for-developing-nations-mission accomplished.

"We [EDUN] loved the idea of working with an organic farmer's market stand. We wanted to do it last season, but the weather was so harsh the day of our show!” Ms. Hewson told The Observer afterward.

“September is the perfect time to enjoy the fruits of our surrounding farming community and of course, in EDUN, apples are close to our hearts.”

To The Observer’s chagrin, once it became apparent that everything at the farm stand was gratis, the crowd dove like hawks attacking prey. Grabbing bags of apples and even scarfing down homemade doughnuts. It’s a rare sighting to behold the fashion frenzy nibble even raw almonds or a Fiber One bar, but doughnuts? Impressive!

History in the unmaking. (WNYC)

The laments over the demise of the original Penn Station are so well worn by now that they have almost collapsed in on themselves like the original building. It was only last week that we were fretting over the failed protests of 40 years ago to save the damn thing. Was it really that long ago? Feels like only yesterday.

That is what makes the revelation that a tiny piece of the original building has been hiding in plain sight for decades now. Historicist and foamers rejoice. An old iron and glass entryway has been uncovered in the bowels of Penn Station by an intrepid reporter at WNYC.

TN has learned that this entryway–part of the original Penn Station–was walled off in 1963, when the above-ground part of the station was razed. [...] In the early 1990s, Penn Station underwent a major renovation, its first since the original building was demolished. That’s when workers took down the wall and discovered the entryway. “It was found exactly where it is now,” Arena said. “The contractor cleaned it, painted it and put in windows.” It is now a deep umber color.

As far as we can tell, the entryway went back into service quietly–no announcement was made about the salvaged piece of history. It’s safe to assume that a large part of the station’s 600,000 weekday travelers pass by without an inkling of its provenance. In places, the paint on the entryway’s columns is worn away from the hordes of commuters brushing past it, wanting only to leave Penn Station.

After at first doubting the report, an MTA spokesman confirmed to WNYC's Tranportation Nation blog that the portico was indeed original, and as the picture shows, is somewhere in the Long Island Railroad concourse, the lower level section that is indeed the most depressing part of the third world station.

The discovery is fitting given the reawakening of a grand train hall on the West Side. Despite futurist plans, Amtrak recently revealed that it will be using much of the old Farley Post Office structure as the marquee feature an a Moynihan Station that we continue to pray—but doubt ever—will be built. At least we have our new old archway.

Not just the banal concourses of Phase 1 that have bandied about before—nothing new there—but honest to god interiors of the grand train hall meant to restore Penn Station to its former glory inside the old Farley Post office. In a bid for both historical preservation and cost savings, the roof of the post office will no longer be ripped off and replaced with a new glass ceiling, but instead the existing one, with its massive steel trusses will be preserved.

Naturally, the very next morning, The Observer was hot on the trail of those renderings. (Really, do we care about anything else?) Sadly, one bureaucrat or press handler after another said, well, those are preliminary designs, so we're not really ready to reveal them.

But Amtrak just did, even if it didn't mean to, in its latest report on high-speed rail for the Northeast Corridor (coming someday, we promise, fingers crossed), which the fine folks over at WNYC's Transportation Nation picked up. Therein lie the renderings we were after, along with a lot of other cool high-speed rail pics that will keep us dreaming until we can finally get on board.

That is set for 2025, but if Moynihan timelines are any indication, not to mention the deaths of such projects as ARC, then 2055 does not seem unreasonable.

She's the spokesman and a rider. (Amtrak)

A smile bigger than Thomas the Tank Engine's.

“My oldest memory of riding the train? I don’t know, that’s hard,” Rosario Dawson told The Observer last Tuesday night. “I was born in Coney Island, but grew up on the Lower East Side, so we spent a lot of time on the F-Train, going to the beach. My dad used to wear his little shorts, and the knee-high socks. He was the most handsome guy on the entire boardwalk.”

And thus the country’s most beautiful railroad buff was born.

Ms. Dawson was standing inside a post office in Midtown, there for a four-course dinner at which she was the guest of honor. She wore a form-fitting black pant suit, ruffled black shirt and black pumps that had to be nine-inches long and sharper than a railroad tie.

This was no ordinary post office, to be fair, but the Corinthian temple on Eighth Avenue known as the James Farley building, once Manhattan’s central post office, and certainly its grandest. From a staff of thousands, there is now a skeleton crew of about a hundred, which has freed up acres of space in the building for Moynihan Station. A dream since the early 1990s of the former New York senator for whom it is named, it will allow for the expansion of Penn Station across the avenue and out of the hell it has resided in for the past six decades, since Robert Moses destroyed the original Penn in 1963.

Amtrak and the Port Authority had assembled big wigs from both sides of the Hudson, and as far as Albany, Trenton and Washington, for a dinner to celebrate the awarding of a contract for the first phase of the station, to be ratified by a state agency the following morning. Construction is set to begin on the $267 million project this summer, work that will take four years to complete because the tracks below ground will be still for weekend nights only, and even then only 32 weeks out of the year.

Even then, the best the city will be left with is longer platforms, a new concourse and two entrances on the west of Eight Avenue. When the rest of the billion-dollar station, creating a grand new train hall inside the old post office, will commence is anyone’s guess. It was supposed to have begun at least twice by now.

“After 20 years of presentations, releases and announcements, we are finally moving forward with this important project, and I think we will all remember where we were when this happened,” Pat Foye, executive director of the Port Authority, told the assembled graybeards as they dug into their second course, crab cakes, available on Amtrak’s California Zephyr line, between Chicago and San Francisco.

It is a sad, even pathetic fate passenger rail suffers in America. It is said to be a pet project of President Obama, but wherever he sets out to fund a new tunnel or high-speed rail line, another Republican governor (Christie, Walker, Scott) kills it. The few dozen men and women assembled inside the Farley’s cavernous old sorting room, with its soaring skylight and massive steel trusses, maybe someday destined to be the new train hall, hope to stop them.

And so does Rosario Dawson.  She may be the Official Spokesman for National Train Day, but she is also the most earnest train advocate The Observer has ever met who does not have a Lionel set in the basement (we asked). She went on a five-minute breathless tirade enthusing on rail travel during the main course, short ribs and pureed potatoes. She even starred in Unstoppable, a 2010 runaway-train film. This is no Campbell Soup campaign, this is National Hair Club—Rosario Dawson is not only a spokesman, but a rider, too.

“I love riding trains, I do it whenever I can,” she said. “In New York, I still ride the subway, sometimes. It’s so liberating not to be stuck in traffic. And I love taking Amtrak. You don’t have to deal with the hassle of security, and you can actually see the scenery, get up and move, the food is better, and the bathrooms are bigger than a closet. I just took it back from the White House Correspondents Dinner, and it’s so much fun to see everyone there on the train.”

The train is one of the biggest things Ms. Dawson misses since leaving New York. “That’s what I hate about L.A., the constant traffic. I really wish there were more trains.” (Actually there will be soon, thanks to a new sales tax funding $40 billion in mass transit over the next 30 years. That would fund two Second Avenue Subways or 15 7-Train extensions.)

Still, like many in the room last week, she was embarrassed by the state of American mass transit. “In London, where I live part time, I’m, across from King’s Cross Station,” Ms. Dawson explained. “I love watching the people come and go, to be able to get to Paris in a few hours. I had a friend headed up to Leicester, she invited me to dinner, I said, ‘Why not,’ hopped a train, was on the other side of England and still got back in time for a 6 a.m. shoot the next morning.”

“I really hope this new station can help bring people back to train travel, it’s so romantic and luxurious,” Ms. Dawson said. With her on board, how could it not?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The Moynihan Mall! (SOM)

It is one of the most mythic and elusive redevelopment projects in the city, the plan to restore at least some of Penn Station's former glory with a new station inside the old Farley Post Office. But this train could be delayed for good.Moyn* Station broke ground on a no-frills first phase last fall, but it looks like that could be as far as the ambitious station gets if Related and Vornado can't figure out what to do with their half of the station, according to The Journal. With a year-end deadline looming, the two Steves are coming up short on retail options for Moynihan Station.

Seeking other options, in recent months the developers have tried to get the City University of New York interested in a land swap plan with the Tribeca-based Borough of Manhattan Community College, the people said.

The developers would have built it a new campus in the back of the post office, and in turn, the developers would have been able to build apartments with unobstructed Hudson River views on the school's valuable land of the five-block campus along the West Side Highway.

But those talks appear to have fizzled recently, as CUNY officials showed little interest, people familiar with the discussions said.

As if it were not news enough that the Moynihan Station development deal was in doubt, who knew such an audacious, if now ill-fated, landswap was in the works? Those Steves never met a crazy landswap or air rights flip they did not like. After all, it was the plan to move Madison Square Garden into the Farley that derailed the Moynihan project most recently. The Journal also reveals that the developers have been trying to attract Nordstroms or Target, so far to no avail.

What to do? BeLTT will never develop into a fully formed neighborhood until it gets a mall stuff inside a historic facade.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Not that there's much to celebrate just yet: the $1.5 billion reconstruction of the station within the defunct James Farley post office is still years, if not many more decades, away. For now, we get a new concourse, extended platforms, and some glorified subway entrances. Meanwhile, the other major project for the station, the ARC Tunnel, which would have also expanded the station, is still very much off the tracks.

Still, who doesn't love some good political theater? A cinderblock wall was even erected and subsequently demolished with sledgehammers, a nice twist on the usual officials-moving-around-dirt-with-golden-shovels routine. Tom Scocca took in the scene:

Schumer spoke for a while. A fire engine drove by, with its sirens wailing, and Schumer kept talking over it. Not long after, a Beth Israel ambulance went by, again with sirens, and Schumer kept talking over the ambulance. The Empire State Building was built during the Great Depression, Schumer said, and Moynihan Station can be built in an economic downturn too—"smartly and with good focus."

Schumer introduced his junior Senate colleague, Kirsten Gillibrand, who spoke briefly, then yielded again to Schumer, who introduced Ray LaHood, the Secretary of Transportation. "You cannot stop Charles Schumer," LaHood said. "I don't care if you're a fire truck or an ambulance."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

With each additional approval (of which there are many), it's actually looking like the project, which would eventually move Amtrak into the Corinthian column-lined Farley Post Office across Eighth Avenue, will see the start of construction. The long-sought expansion, which has been in the works for two decades, has become a symbol of the tortured progress of New York public works projects.

The approval today was for $267 million in infrastructure construction that would expand a concourse and complete ventilation work--most certainly not the sexiest or visually appealing part of the project. On its own, this probably isn't worth $267 million in value for riders, as the spending rests on the assumption that the state will eventually find money for the rest of the project.

Back in 2006, the PACB, which is controlled jointly by the governor and the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly, blocked Governor Pataki's plans for the project, as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver stood in the way of the plan. Complete with the project's narrative of ever-overreaching visions, the incoming Governor Spitzer then championed a larger version that involved moving Madison Square Garden to the post office, which more than a year later fell apart, due largely to the tremendous level of complication involved. (In retrospect, this plan approved today isn't all that different from what the PACB was being asked to approve three-and-a-half years ago. Of course, that was before tens of millions of additional spending on consultants, borrowing costs, etc.) 

This time, however, all the legislative leaders were on board with the spending, which was mostly federal money earmarked for the project. (Here's the PACB agenda.) In the past year, state officials reworked the plan to be able to construct the project in chunks, as opposed to the prior strategy of waiting until all the various moving pieces fell into place. Should construction actually begin, it will be in large part due to this new strategy.  

Still on the table, in theory: the sale of at least 1 million square feet of air rights over the Farley Building to a venture of developers Vornado and Related, which would build a tower across the street next to 1 Penn Plaza. (That, too, would need further approvals.)

ebrown@observer.com