In Manhattan’s West Side—a stretch of Midtown spanning from Penn Station to Hudson Yards—a new network of public spaces and pathways now links the district above and below ground. To a visitor, these connections might feel like a single, master-planned vision. In reality, they are the result of several distinct projects, many of them decades in the making.
In an essay for Urban Land Magazine titled “Beyond Buildings: Four Decades of City-making on Manhattan’s West Side,” Principal Keith O’Connor reflects on how this series of architecture and infrastructure projects have converged to prioritize the pedestrian experience. This evolution has created a functional route from the East End Gateway at Penn Station and Moynihan Train Hall to a new timber bridge that links Manhattan West to the High Line and Hudson Yards.
“These acts of city-making weren’t born from a single master plan implemented all at once,” wrote O’Connor. “Instead, they required navigating complex constraints with specific design responses. A sense of civic obligation has driven generations of SOM designers to turn individual commissions into a cohesive public realm.”
