Penn Station Pyramids: Critics Question Human Hostile Transit Spaces

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The new flagship entrance to Penn Station that added sparkle to the famously grimy transit hub late last year now has structures resembling ancient wonders of the world.

A trio of wooden pyramids were erected atop flat metal security bollards outside the East End Gateway stations at Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street just months after the glass and steel entrance opened in December 2020 in slope of the Long Island Rail Road concourse.

The pyramids, painted in bright pastel colors, look quite artistic but were set up to deter unauthorized activity at the entrance which saw an MTA police booth added several weeks after it opened, one said. spokesperson for the MTA.

People slept there all the time, said Crystal McFadden, a 49-year-old homeless woman who instead sat last week on an NYPD barricade outside the entrance. They are no longer there.

Installed in May, the pyramids are among the examples in the city and around the transit system of what critics have called hostile architecture.

Other examples include spikes on ledges, fences on benches or no benches at all, and so-called leaning bars at bus stops and inside some recently renovated metro stations.

These designs and related policies often aim to exclude homeless people, as well as young people, vendors and other marginalized groups, Nate Storring, deputy executive director of the Project for Public Spaces, told THE TOWN.

Vagrancy is the catch-all offense that managers of a public space often use to prevent certain types of people from even spending time in the space.

Mercedes with mud on it

Gerard Bringmann, president of the Long Island Rail Road Commuters Council, said that before the pyramids, the terminals also served as tables or beds and that commuters complained about the aggressive beggars outside the entrance.

Millions were spent building this thing and now we have commuters avoiding it because they don’t want to be hassled by beggars up the stairs, said Bringmann, who is also a board member of MTA. It’s like buying a Mercedes and someone throwing mud on it.

The designers of Moynihan Train Hall have taken a minimalist approach to public seating. August 13, 2021.Hiram Alejandro Durn / THE CITY

The $ 600 million East End Gateway has long escalators and staircases that offer views of the Empire State Building to travelers exiting Penn Station. The entrance is part of Empire State Developments’ larger Penn Station redesign, which included the opening of the Moynihan Train Room.

Fuquan Ford, 60, who usually begs outside another entrance to Penn Station, said he avoided the new walkway.

They are there drinking and harassing people trying to get home and get on the train, he told THE CITY. So what they did is absolutely correct, get them out of there.

Cruel Architecture

Some homeless advocates say the addition of the tops of the pyramids as well as other barriers in the city and the public transportation system is a testament to the failure of government and society to meet the basic needs of those who live in the city. lack of shelter.

It’s much easier to erect hostile architecture and criminalize people and kick them out of public spaces, said Jacquelyn Simone, senior policy analyst at Coalition for the Homeless. Too often, we focus solely on the lens rather than the root causes of homelessness.

In 2017, the MTA was criticized for installing grab bars on sloping slabs against a wall that makes it almost impossible to sleep on at several recently renovated stations that also had new-look benches placed on the platforms. The agency did not include any public offices in the Fulton Center, a Lower Manhattan transit hub that opened in 2014.

More recently, the lack of public seating inside Moynihan Train Hall, which opened on January 1 to LIRR and Amtrak customers, has drawn criticism.

The new lobby inside the former James Farley Post Office features buckled seats for ticketed passengers and a food hall is slated to open later this year. But the space closes daily between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., another measure critics say is designed to keep homeless people out of the cavernous and confined building at Penn Station.

For a flashy new station to have no seats, it seems a bit cruel to commuters, said Jessica Murray, who has researched public spaces as part of her work on recently completed PhD in Developmental Psychology at CUNY Graduate Center. If people are going to sit on the floor, it tells you something about their unmet needs.

Travelers seated on the floor in Moynihan station. August 13, 2021.Hiram Alejandro Durn / THE CITY

While waiting at Moynihan Train Hall for an Amtrak train to Boston, Linda Santos, 28, was sitting on one of her suitcases.

Traveling is tiring, in general, she says. I would sit on a bench if I could.

Storring, of the Project for Public Spaces, said the most difficult type of hostile architecture to spot can be in public spaces without seating.

It’s always sad when a brand new multi-million dollar public space fails to make itself comfortable and welcoming out of fear, he said.

There’s a whole Instagram account, @hostiledesign_nyc, which features images from across the city of public spaces that document designs against humanity.

Jeremy Cooper, from New York, said he created the account to help people think critically about the design of public space and ask when and where the city is made for all, or made only for some. and only in some places.

Hostile architecture can sometimes protect property and be designed to enforce policy rules, said Cooper, 32. But it really does dictate how and when the public can use public spaces.

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