Slow and Steady Wins the ...

David Childs finally got his way at Ground Zero--muscling out any remaining Daniel Libeskind influence on the latest Freedom Tower revision--but he couldn't hold on in Midtown. At a press conference, outside, in the middle of the afternoon, without a shade tree in sight, Governor Pataki et. al. announced that the design of the Moynihan Station, first drafted by Childs and his crew at Skidmore Owings and Merrill, would be taken over by James Carpenter "in collaboration with" Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum. Childs' seashell atrium was cast away in favor of Carpenter's undulating dome to turn the present Farley Post Office at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street into a train station--of sorts. The trains will still be downstairs--and, for the most part, across the street, on the same tracks of the subterranean Pennsylvania Station--but now you can walk up three dozen steps and through a mini-mall to get to them! Carpenter, a glass sculptor who consulted on the 7 World Trade Center façade, sweat through his shirt and into his jacket during the announcement, proving that the seven-year-old project really has been a marathon. - Matthew Schuerman