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 no less firmly do I hold that we shall one day recognize in Freud’s life-work the cornerstone for the building of a new anthropology and therewith of a new structure, to which many stones are being brought up today, which shall be the future dwelling of a wiser and freer humanity.” “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” “The real dividing line between early childhood and middle childhood is not between the fifth year and the sixth year—it is more nearly when children are about seven or eight, moving on toward nine. Building the barrier at six has no psychological basis. It has come about only from the historic-economic-political fact that the age of six is when we provide schools for all.” |