James Farley Post Office
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The James A. Farley Post Office, New York City's General Post Office, is located at 421 Eighth Avenue, between 31st Street and 33rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the street from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden. The building, bearing the inscription: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, is a National Historic Landmark, and occupies two full city blocks, an eight-acre footprint straddling the tracks of the Northeast Corridor in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. The inscription was supplied by William Mitchell Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, the architects who designed the Farley Building and the original Pennsylvania Station in the same Beaux-Arts style. The sentence is a paraphrase of an excerpt from the works of Herodotus (Wikiquote) and describes the expedition of the Greeks against the Persians under Cyrus the Great, about 500 BCE. The Persians operated a system of mounted postal couriers, and the sentence describes the fidelity with which their work was done.
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[edit] Round-the-clock service
The James A. Farley Station Post Office holds the distinction of being the only station in New York City that is open to the public 24 hours and 7 days a week -- with the exception of certain holidays.
[edit] Future plans
The Farley building is planned to be converted into a new entrance and concourse for Penn Station by the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corporation, which is a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation. The expansion, supported in part by new retail space, is estimated to cost over $750 million and is intended to restore some of the grandeur lost when the original Penn Station was demolished in 1964. The new "station" (that is, a new part of Penn Station) is to be named after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
New Jersey Transit announced on November 21, 2005 that it would become the anchor tenant of the new Moynihan Station, slated to open to passengers in 2010. NJ Transit has signed a 99-year lease to rent 35,000 square feet of space $2.3 million annually. The United States Postal Service will retain approximately 250,000 square feet of the 1.5 million square-foot building. Beyond retail lobby services, other postal operations remaining in the building will include Express Mail, mail delivery, truck platforms, and a stamp depository. Administrative offices for the Postal Service's New York District will also be headquartered there.
All mail processing operations will be relocated one block away to the Morgan Processing and Distribution Center. All other administrative functions now in the Farley Building will be moved to the Church Street Processing and Distribution Center in Manhattan. Approximately 2,500 postal employees worked in the Farley Building as of 2002. Once operations and administrative offices are moved, approximately 900 employees will remain in their current location.
When Moynihan Station opens, Amtrak and NJ Transit passengers will be able to board and exit trains from either Moynihan Station or the previously existing part of Penn Station.
Scaffolding has already gone up on the Farley Building's exterior, courtesy of the Empire State Development Corporation, which is assisting in the Moynihan Station conversion. [1]
In additions, plans are being drawn up for a new version of Madison Square Garden on Farley's western half. This building, which would face Ninth Avenue, would replace the current Garden located a half-block away. This version of the Garden would be placed atop the extension of the Farley Building erected in the early 1930's, which contains office, garage and processing space.
[edit] Handicapped access
Handicapped access is extremely poor in the current building. Patrons who require access to the building must call to request access, wait on hold, then ask for someone to let them in the back of the building or locate a police officer on the perimeter of the large block, and ask the police officer to contact someone inside the post office building to help them.
[edit] History
The Farley Post Office was constructed in two stages. The original monumental front half was built in 1912 and opened for postal business in 1914; the building was doubled in 1934 by Farley as Postmaster General where it backs up to Ninth Avenue: along the side streets, McKim, Mead, and White's range, which continues its Corinthian giant order as pilasters between the window bays, was simply repeated in order to carry the facade to Ninth Avenue. The monumental façade on Eighth Avenue was conceived as a Corinthian colonnade braced at the end by two pavilions. The imposing design was meant to match in strength the colonnade of Pennsylvania Station (McKim, Mead, and White, 1910) that originally faced it across the avenue. An unbroken flight of steps the full length of the colonnade provides access, for the main floor devoted to customer services is above a functional basement level that rises out of a dry moat giving light and air to workspaces below. Each of the square end pavilions is capped with a low saucer dome, expressed on the exterior as a low stepped pyramid. Inside, the visitor finds an unbroken vista down a long gallery that parallels the colonnaded front.
Upon opening in 1914 it was named the Pennsylvania Terminal. In July 1918, the building was renamed the General Post Office, and in 1982, renamed once more as the James A. Farley Building as a congressional act. James Farley was the 53rd Postmaster General and served from 1933 to 1940. Farley served as Roosevelt's kingmaker, managing his gubenatorial campaighns and F.D.R.'s Presidential campaighns up to 1936. Farley was Chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and the Democratic National Committee, as well as NYS's first Boxing Commisioner. Farley oversaw construction of the rear extension which was completed in 1934 through the WPA and PWA programs Farley helped to create under the "New Deal". Farley was Chairman of General Builders Supply Corp and Coca-Cola International as well. Farley died in 1976. The naming of the Landmark after Farley represented "A Monument to a Monumental Man", as coined by the Post Master in 1982. The Symbolism of the building represents the enormous power Farley wielded as the Head of the Post Office Depatment, which at the time was the chief dispenser of the Democratic Parties Patronage System. The Patronage System was the act of giving loyal party members government jobs, a system that the President himself was beholdent to under Farley. James A. Farley is considered by scholars as one of the Twenith Centuries greates political figures and the Twenith Centuries greatest National Party Boss. In intelelctual circles Farley is credited with being one of the Chief architects of the "New Deal", as a member of the "Brain Trust", and as having a major contributing hand in the "making of modern American Politics" [{Dr. Daniel Scroop, "Mr. Democrat: Jim Farley, The New Deal, & The Making of Modern Politics}{Oxford University P.h.d.} ]
The Farley Building was instrumental to maintaining service levels in the New York City area following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when it served as a back up to operations for the Church Street Station Post Office located across the street from the World Trade Center complex. Advances in automated mail processing technology, coupled with adjustments to postal distribution and transportation networks now make it feasible to absorb associated mail volumes at the Morgan Center.
