From National Public Radio:
Across the street from Penn Station, in the heart of midtown Manhattan, is the enormous and imposing Farley Post Office.
Designed in 1912 by the famous architecture firm of McKim, Mead and White, the Farley building covers two square city blocks. You can still climb up its marble staircase to mail a letter, but there’s very little left behind that grand facade.
“I love the fact, among many, that you walk by it every day and you have no idea that 95 percent of it is empty,” says film location scout Nick Carr, who has written about the post office on his blog, Scouting NY. He tells NPR’s Jacki Lyden that the building has featured in at least one film, Miracle on 34th Street.
Five thousand people once worked in this building. It was a self-contained city within a city, with a medical wing, photo studio, cafeteria, fitness room, even a jail for any miscreants who tried to meddle with the mail.