Write it in Penn

Ajourney that Sen. Pat Moynihan started a quarter century ago, that was stymied again and again by baffling and blood-boiling bureaucratic obstacles, is finally nearing its destination. Gov. Cuomo last week kicked off construction of what will be known as Moynihan Station, an effective re-creation in the old Farley Post Office of the glorious original Penn Station that fell victim to the wrecking ball more than a half-century ago. The buildings are architectural twins from the classical masters of McKim, Mead & White.

If all goes according to plan — and this time, at last, there’s good reason to believe it will — the new station will arrive in December 2020, a veritable blink of the eye in the near-archeological timetable by which city infrastructure progress is measured.

Dare we say the final product will almost be worth the wait, as open and glorious and uplifting as the current Penn is dank and dismal?

Last week, we stood in the 1914-era Farley edifice beneath an orange spray-painted stencil “Moynihan Train Hall” on the rough concrete wall. The immense 160-foot-by-200-foot mail sorting floor had just been removed, making a 74-foot clearance up to the original steel trusses. A new glass roof will be lifted even higher, up to 92 feet.

Both by square footage and total volume, it is larger than Grand Central’s main concourse, and it impresses equally.

Ringing the room are 14 huge steel girders. Forty-two feet tall, they were installed by workmen more than century ago.

Each is hollow, containing a ladder that let postal inspectors climb into the network of high catwalks to make sure the mail wasn’t stolen as millions of letters crisscrossed the sorting floor.

Soon it will be millions of people crisscrossing the floor every year.

Shafts of sunlight stream down, reflecting on dust in the air, rays reaching a cut in the floor to Tracks 9 and 10 below. Natural light on all tracks was what old Penn had and what will be again.

Unlike other transit cathedrals — like the $4.4 billion marble PATH mausoleum downtown — this one, at $1.6 billion, will truly serve many millions.

Cuomo should bring the Democrat and Republican running for New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy and Kim Guadagno, to see it. One look will convince them get NJ Transit to restart plans to extend platforms for Tracks 1 to 4 — where commuters from under the Hudson arrive — allowing Jerseyans to join LIRR and Amtrak in the new hall.

We asked Cuomo why it is important to have such a place. To recapture a lost sense of possibility, he said: “There was a sense of confidence where we were building for the future and we were investing for the future and we built grand civic spaces. Why? Because we were New York. We wanted to be the best.

“Do you need a 90-foot ceiling? No. You can build a 12-foot ceiling.”

But “There is more to New York than just the utilitarian function of the structure. You are making a statement about who you are and that’s what was lost and this will regain it.” All aboard.