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From: "Paul S DOT Luchter" luckyshow AT mindspring DOT com
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 01:55:21 -0400
Subject: Lackawanna Terminal
"Hoboken.jpg" - image/jpeg, 61547 bytes, 860x600 (24bit)

The gables are mot part of the Terminal but an illusion...behind those ferry
portals is the 2nd largest such space of its kind to the Hall of
Versailles...

two thirds of this station is on piers over the water...once there was a
copper clad turreted tower not far from where the antenna is today. Under it
at the southeast corner was a popular restaurant with a grand view..to the
left Immigrant Pier, where the immigrants from Castle Clinton, then Ellis
Island arrived for transport west on the Lackawanna...

I think it is wrong that they removed the 1960 addition of the "Erie"after
the merger of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western with the famed Erie
Railroad to form the Erie-Lackawanna...it had a valid historical value and
was a relic from its time as well. It had historical relevance to the site
and to the history of rail heads and ferry traffic on the Hudson...

Once in front of the hotel behind the ferry concourse from this view was the
Public Service Transit terminal loops, the two story streetcar attachment
that glommed onto the older Lackawanna Terminal when Public Service had a
traction empire in northern New Jersey...People who knew Hoboken then have a
hard time understanding how there weren't streetcars in Hoboken anymore
(there are again, of course, on a very much smaller level)


I can't remember that restaurant's name, and I can't find my book on the
station...

Hoboken is a great place, when it was very ethnic and now that it's more
upscale, great old buildings, very nice small city with a lot of history;
early suburb; first game of baseball played there.

The Elysian Fields, to the right in this photo was a large hillside
riverside park, before Central Park, the park to take a ferry to for New
Yorkers.., now just a "vest pocket" park remnant down the street from
Maxwell's.

In 1630, Michael Pauw led the Dutch to purchase Hoboken's site from the
Leni-Lenape, "who smoked carved stone pipes and named it Hobocan for
'Hobocan Hackingh'-'land of the tobacco pipe'..."

The first brewery in America was built in 1642 by Aert T. van Putten..the
immigrants in 19th century from Germany enhanced the breweries and beer
gardens and halls (Maybe Maxwell's)

New York Knickerbockers played baseball at Elysian Fields in 1846..
During World War One, Hoboken was the main port of embarkation for U.S.
Armed Forces to Europe.
I leave the D,L & W history to the experts. They began 1851.

This station with its gilded balconied waiting room and stained glass
skylight is a hidden secret gem of the New York area.

And maybe it is threatened by all the reroutings into Penn Station but for
now it is still a very busy and active station, older than Grand Central,
could it be the oldest rail terminal at a water body still in active (And
continuous) use in this country? (How many were there anyway?)

The Route of the Phoebe Snow...you left from west 23rd street or Barclay
Street..I wish they had left the old Greek revival ferry building at Barclay
(Though it would be about a block inland today on the landfill maybe, if
those weren't the pilings of the building piers we saw north of Battery Park
City..


The town was laid out by John Stevens, of railroad locomotive fame, in 1784,
after he bought it...


Hoboken.jpg

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