NJ Transit, Hoboken Station, New Jersey. July 2010
People forget that back in the day, New York City had THREE major railway stations: Grand Central, Penn Station [see: Penn Station], AND Hoboken Station. Of course, Hoboken is in New Jersey, but the sole function of that terminal was to get thousands of people into Manhattan daily via the combination of train and ferry. Even though I love Grand Central and that beautiful vaulted ceiling of the heavens, Hoboken's "intermodal" station is just as amazing. Viewed from the land side a clocktower and entrance facade covered in copper plates proclaim Lackawanna Railroad. Viewed from the river side six HUGE copper-clad arched doors for ferries (formerly as big as the Staten Island Ferry) stand open to berth and either absorb train passengers in the morning or disgorge them every late afternoon.
The exterior of the terminal is also a riot of decorative copper. It seems to clad virtually the whole of the outside of the building, formed into various Beaux Arts features; scrollwork, pilasters, swags, pediments, the lot. Rather like Grand Central, it seems to have been a case of throwing everything at the terminal’s design and seeing what stuck. And what stuck was everything. From outside, the building is split into two obvious parts, the eastern section housing the railroad concourse, and the larger western section serving the ferries. The junction of the two is marked with an impressive 69m-tall clock tower, carrying the legend “Lackawanna” vertically, with the letters illuminated at night.
The train lobby is not as huge as Grand Central but the stained glass in the ceiling is Tiffany! The terminal's train lobby is one of the most underrated public spaces in the whole New York City metro area.
Set in the middle of a decorative plasterwork border, it’s a huge work of beautiful stained glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany (the same Tiffany of the Tiffany lamps). It is largely geometric in pattern, with floral elements towards the centre. It’s not the only piece of stained glass, either. More can be found over doorways and ticket offices, explaining what facilities can be found underneath.
Hoboken Station is only very busy during the rush hours and since the lobby with its grand staircases to the old ferry docks is no longer used very heavily, it is always a quiet place. Is it surprising then that some TV series (such as Law & Order) and a few movies used Hoboken Terminal Lobby as the backdrop for the generic "New York City Train Station" waiting room?
When we first left the City, we bought a condo in Hoboken not that far from Hoboken Station. Brian was commuting to Midtown and being close to public transport was paramount. I came to use its PATH and ferry terminal frequently in the time we lived in the "Mile Square City". Then, in the Milford years, that long train ride to Port Jervis, NY started and ended in Hoboken Station. The station was part of my life for well over a decade and yet it always was looked upon as such an afterthought both historically and architecturally. New Jersey restored it and keeps it up, but few people ever talked about "Hoboken Terminal" in the same way they talked about Grand Central. Such the pity - Hoboken Station has killer views of Manhattan AND an incredible renovated pier park next door featuring a beautiful greenspace with the Hudson and Manhattan as backdrop. Add to that the station is a riot of copper outside and marble and Tiffany glass inside and one wonders just how it has not got on people's radar more except as a "stunt double" for a big train station in Manhattan.
In a final sad note the opening of the station almost coincided with its demise:
The architect of Hoboken Terminal was Kenneth M Murchison. He was hired by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad to design the terminal after fire destroyed the existing one on the same site. Murchison’s new station opened in 1907. It was one of a number of stations along the western bank of the Hudson, as close as railroads from the central parts of the US could get to Manhattan. The wide and heavily trafficked Hudson River wasn’t amenable to bridging, and tunneling had been, until then, out of the reach of technology. All that was about to change, as the new underground (and underwater) Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (today’s PATH Train) opened in 1908, just a year after the new Hoboken Terminal itself, linking Hoboken to 19th Street and 6th Avenue in New York.
The irony that such a grand space started its path of obsolescence just a year after completion! It is possible to arrive by PATH or ferry and get on train and never see the station in all its grandeur - if anyone takes more than a "New York minute", they might find a pleasant surprise at water's edge in Hoboken, NJ.