Hoboken Terminal

History

Until the opening of the North River Tunnels and the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad tubes around 1910 travel to Manhattan from most of the continental USA required a transfer to a ferry at the Hudson River, at the time often called the North River. Of the five passenger terminals operated by competing railroad companies that once lined the Hudson Waterfront, Hoboken is the only one in active use. Those at Weehawken (NYC), Pavonia (Erie), Exchange Place (PRR) were demolished in the 1960s. The restored Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal is now part of Liberty State Park.

Cuts and tunnels were constructed through Bergen Hill to the terminals on the west bank of the river and the Upper New York Bay. One of the Bergen Hill Tunnels under Jersey City Heights was opened in 1876 by the Morris and Essex Railroad. A parallel tunnel was added in 1908 by Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad (DL&W). Both are still used by NJ Transit.

The site of the terminal has been used as a ferry landing since the colonial era, accessible via turnpike roads, and later plank roads (namely the Hackensack, the Paterson and a spur of the Newark Plank Road). John Stevens, founder of Hoboken and inventor, launched steamboat service in 1811. Ferry service ended In 1967. It resumed in 1989 on the south side of the terminal and moved back to the restored ferry slips inside the historic terminal on December 7, 2011.

The Phoebe Snow was a premiere passenger train that departed daily from the station. In 1956, four years before its merger with the DL&W to form the Erie Lackawanna Railway, the Erie Railroad began shifting its trains from its Jersey City terminal to Hoboken. In October 1965, on former Erie routes, there were five weekday trains ran to Midvale, three to Nyack, three to Waldwick via Newark, two to Essex Fells, two to Carlton Hill, and one to Newton. All those trains were dropped in 1966. Trains to Chicago and Buffalo were discontinued on January 5, 1970.

Numerous streetcar lines (eventually owned and operated by the Public Service Railway), including the Hoboken Inclined Cable Railway, originated/terminated at the station until bustitution was completed on August 7, 1949.

The station was badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012, with a 5 feet (1.5 m) storm surge inundating the facility. The waiting room reopened in January 2013, but extensive repairs were still in progress.

On the morning of September 29, 2016, an NJ Transit train crashed through a bumper block and into the concourse of the station, killing one person and injuring over 110 people.

Notable other uses

One year before his death, Thomas Edison was at the controls for the first departure, in 1930, of a regular-service electric multiple unit train from Hoboken Terminal to Montclair. One of the first installations of central air-conditioning in a public space was at the station, as was the first non-experimental use of mobile phones.

The station has been used for film shoots, including Funny Girl, Three Days of the Condor, Once Upon a Time in America, The Station Agent, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Julie & Julia, Rod Stewart's Downtown Train video (1990) and Eric Clapton's video for his 1996 single "Change the World".

Commuter rail

Access to other NJ Transit rail lines is available at Newark Penn Station (which also serves Amtrak), Secaucus Junction, or Newark Broad Street.

Rapid transit rail

PATH trains provide 24-hour service on three routes from a three-track underground station located north of the surface platforms. Entrances are from the main concourse or street, below the Hudson Place bus station with both an elevator and stairs. Travel to Newark Penn Station always requires a transfer, as does weekday service to Journal Square Transportation Center.

Light rail

Hoboken Terminal is the terminus for two of the three Hudson-Bergen Light Rail routes and the Bayonne Flyer. Light rail platforms for which are located south of Track 18 and the terminal building, and provide a pathway connection to 14th Street along the Hudson River.

Ferry

Weekday ferry service is operated by NY Waterway to the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal at the World Financial Center and Pier 11 at Wall Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan.

Bus service

Current New Jersey Transit Bus Operations are as follows:

Named passenger trains

Until the 1960s several streamliner trains originated at Hoboken. Passenger trains extended beyond the daily commuter market to Buffalo, New York; to Chicago; and to northeastern Pennsylvania.

Design, designation, and restoration

Designed by architect Kenneth M. Murchison in the Beaux-Arts style, the rail and ferry terminal buildings were constructed in 1907 by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The terminal building is listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places (added in 1973 as #73001102 as the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad and Ferry Terminal). It has been undergoing extensive renovations which were projected for completion in 2011.

The large main waiting room, with its floral and Greek Revival motifs in tiled stained glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany set atop bands of pale cement, is generally considered one of the finest in the U.S. aesthetically. The terminal exterior extends to over four stories and has a distinguished copper-clad façade with ornate detailing. Its single-story base is constructed of rusticated Indiana limestone. A grand double stair with decorative cast-iron railings within the main waiting room provides an entrance to the upper-level ferry concourse.

A 225-foot (69 m) clock tower was originally built with the terminal over a century ago, but was dismantled in the early 1950s due to structural damage and deterioration from weather damage. A new clock tower, replicating the original, was constructed during the terminal's centennial year of 2007 and was fully erect that November. The replica tower has 4-foot-high (1.2 m) copper letters spelling out "LACKAWANNA", which are lit at night.

The original ferry slips inside the historic terminal were restored in 2011.

The terminal is considered a milestone in American transportation development, combining rail, ferry, subway, streetcar (buses were added later, and light-rail was added even later), and pedestrian facilities in one of the most innovatively designed and engineered structures in the nation. Hoboken Terminal was also one of the first stations in the world to employ the Bush-type train shed, designed by and named for Lincoln Bush of the DL&W, which quickly became ubiquitous in station design. The station is unusual for a New York City area commuter railroad terminal in that it still has low-level platforms, requiring passengers to use stairs on the train to board and alight.

Environs and access

Though the passenger facilities are located within Hoboken, a large part of the infrastructure that supports them are located over the Jersey City city line, which cuts across the rail yard at a northwest diagonal from the river to the intersection of Grove Street and Newark Street. It is at this corner that Observer Highway begins running parallel to the tracks and creating a de facto border for Hoboken. The Long Slip (created with the landfilling of Harsimus Cove) creates the southern perimeter of the station, separating it from Newport, Jersey City. Motor vehicle access to the station is extremely limited. At the eastern end of Observer Highway buses are permitted to enter their terminal. Other vehicles are required to do a dog-leg turn onto Hudson Place. This 0.05 mile long street (designated CR 736) is the only one with motor vehicle traffic adjacent to the station and acts as a pick-up/drop off point, and hosts a dedicated taxi stand. Egress from the terminal requires travelling north (for at least one block) on River Street. Hudson Place ends at Warringtron Plaza. On this square one finds the main entrance to the waiting room and the vehicle entrances to the currently unused original ferry slips. A statue of Sam Sloan, president of the DL&W, moved during renovations faces the loading docks of the nearby post office. The plaza was named in honor of George Warrington, influential in the creation of NJ Transit, and as its executive director enabled the purchase and preservation of the station. In 2009, pedestrian access to the terminal from the south was made possible with the opening of a new segment of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway. The closing of this gap along the promenade nearly completes the stretch from the Morris Canal to Weehawken Cove, with signage along the concourse at the rail head inside the terminal indicating that it is officially part of the walkway.