SPOTLIGHT: HIGH TIME IN THE NEW STATION

An associate of architect Peter Pennoyer ’75 admires the 12-foot-tall clock Pennoyer designed for New York City’s Moynihan Train Hall.

MICHAEL MATROS

The new timepiece could only be 5,000 pounds. That meant the clock — 12 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and suspended 25 feet above the concourse of Manhattan’s new Moynihan Train Hall — couldn’t be encased in a material as heavy as metal.

“So, we used something called glass fiber reinforced gypsum,” explains architect Peter Pennoyer ’75, whose New York City firm was hired to design the clock. “You can use GFRG to make sculptural elements. You can make panels; it’s a very robust material.”

Much like the signature clock in Grand Central Terminal, Pennoyer’s Art Deco-inspired piece is becoming the designated meeting area for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) travelers in the new Moynihan Train Hall, across Eighth Avenue from its partner, Penn Station.

Even if possible, building a metal case would also have taken too long, Pennoyer says. After his firm submitted an initial design and the contract was awarded, just three months remained before the hall’s dedication last December.

Fabricated by Hyde Park Mouldings, with works by Americlock, the timepiece features a face designed to be read from four directions across the hall’s vast space. The numerals are in a font, Pennoyer explains, “that speak to the industrial aesthetic and the romance of rail travel. A friend of mine calls the design ‘20th Century Limited.’”

In addition to the rapid turnaround of the design and construction, Pennoyer and his team also faced the challenge of remote collaboration necessitated by the pandemic. Sometimes, that meant worrying about problems that had already been solved.

Now in place, the Art Deco-inspired clock has become a popular meeting spot for travelers going through New York.

Working from home one day in Millbrook, New York, for example, Pennoyer contacted his colleague, Steven Worthington, to share a concern raised by a New York State Transportation office staffer about the legibility of the clock face.

“I called Steve,” Pennoyer recalls, “and he said, ‘Oh, I’ve already worked that out.’”

The previous Sunday, Worthington had printed a fullscale reproduction of the clock face, suspended it from the windows of his Chelsea apartment, and used a laser measuring device outdoors to see from how far away he could read it.

“He got the exact distance,” Pennoyer says. “That was all just pure initiative.”

To view one of Pennoyer’s current projects in progress requires a LIRR trip from Moynihan Train Hall to East Hampton, where the town’s 90-year-old Guild Hall is undergoing a renovation. The architect’s work there, he insists, will be much less noticeable than a giant timepiece.

“I’m proud that we’re not changing the building,” says Pennoyer, whose firm is known in part for the exacting detail with which it addresses historic preservation.

“We’re not going in and making some grand statement,” he adds, “because it has a wonderful, almost domestic scale. My goal is to restore [the hall] to what it was, without some things that have diminished its impact and its charm. And I’m proud of the fact that, when I’m done, people may not notice that I was there, which I think is a good thing these days.”

spshorae.com Alumni Horae | Issue IV 20/2159