Building
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The station is a four story building built into a rockface, with the bottom two levels given over to the tracks and the top two accounted for by the main waiting room, a two story brick-faced building. Its five-bay facade features sculptured masonry designs over the five high arched windows. To the west, a 420x15-foot (128x5 m) steel-frame overhead walkway provides access to the tracks via stairs and elevators. Today it continues westward to provides access to the adjacent parking garage. At the time of the station's construction, it served the businesses along Main Street. The waiting room, modeled on Grand Central Terminal, is a high gallery lit during daylight by the windows and the three original chandeliers. The 14 benches within are also original finished chestnut pieces. The walls are paneled in wood to eight feet (240 cm), after which the carved stone shows all the way to the cornice. More original woodwork, the stained walnut rafters, is present in the ceiling, possibly modeled after a similar design in San Miniato al Monte, an 11th-century church in Florence, Italy. Amenities include bathrooms (also modernized), a concession stand, as well as a ticket counter selling Metro-North tickets alongside two vending machines which also sell MetroCards; Amtrak tickets are available only by Quik-Trak machine. The northernmost MTA Police substation is adjacent to the station as well. As of August 2006, daily commuter ridership was 1,633 and there were 1,101 parking spots. There are five tracks at the platform level, enough to accommodate Amtrak and Metro-North stops simultaneously, although only four are regularly used. The fourth and easternmost has a lower speed limit and is used mainly for non-revenue maintenance trains or those experiencing difficulties. In the late 1960s the North-South Arterial (US 9) was built and elevated immediately to the station's east, somewhat isolating it from the rest of the city. Traffic going along the expressway gets a good view of the station, and it and the nearby steeple Church of the Holy Comforter have become landmarks to travelers passing through the city. Read more about this topic: Poughkeepsie (Metro-North Station) Famous quotes containing the word building:“And when discipline is concerned, the parent who has to make it to the end of an eighteen-hour day—who works at a job and then takes on a second shift with the kids every night—is much more likely to adopt the survivor’s motto: “If it works, I’ll use it.” From this perspective, dads who are even slightly less involved and emphasize firm limits or character- building might as well be talking a foreign language. They just don’t get it.” “Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth.” “... what’s been building since the 1980’s is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. That’s what will last after this flurry on family values.” |