Better known as the PATH, the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad began shuttling passengers through its cast iron tunnels between Manhattan and points in New Jersey in 1908. My travels have been constrained in the last couple of months due to pregnancy. I haven’t been on a plane since October and my last trip out of the country was a 12 hour jaunt to Montreal in September. I’ve even turned down trips to Paris! Our radius of wanderlust has been increasingly contained within slowly shrinking circles centered on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Last weekend was our probably our last adventure out of the city for a bit, as we travelled over to Hoboken, NJ to see the expanding Family C-R in Hoboken, NJ.
I wrote a couple of years ago about the PATH and Hoboken station, before the damage of Hurricane Sandy. I will never forget my bleary eyed shift on my institution’s emergency response team, listening to news reports of fires in Breezy Point and flooding of train tunnels, including Hoboken’s PATH and NJ Transit (Lackawanna) stations. It was my first trip over PATH since the lengthy partial restorations to get them operational.
I find vintage photographs of the Hudson Manhattan tubes fascinating, polished, cutting edge before a period of stainless steel fluorescent decline. Compared to the utilitarian appearance of so much of the NYC Subway, PATH was built with the elegance of a turn of the century rail enterprise. What strikes me about old images of the PATH is the elegant finish of the cars and the ornamented capitals below the vaulted ceilings of the stations, still visible in stations not completely restored [read gutted] in the Port Authority era.
Postcard, Hudson & Manhattan Railroad at Hoboken Station. The capitals are still visible today. Anyone know of preserved Hudson and Manhattan cars in any museum collections today?
I’m looking forward to getting out and about in the New Year with our little guy in tow!
Entrance to the tubes in the no longer extant Hudson Terminal building in downtown Manhattan. It was demolished to make way for the World Trade Center. I particularly like its advertisement of Pennsylvania Railroad connections, making it a PATH further afield. LOL.
Hudson Terminal was an interesting place — on the level seen in the above picture it was an urban indoor mall, circa 1908! I remember going through there as a kid, and there were several corridors on either side with all sorts of stores. Of course the Toy store in the one corner had my undivided attention at the time ;^). The area around the Terminal was also a favorite of my father’s – Radio Row. Dad was into fixing radios and TV’s of the time, and there were multiple electrical supply houses where you could always find that 6AU6 vacuum tube you needed… (Yeah, I am that old…)
You’ll also notice the signage in the picture is Pennsylvania Railroad-centric. The H&M partnered with the Pennsylvania to provide service to Newark Penn Station over what was then PRR trackage. The Pennsylvania also provided PRR-lettered cars as part of the equipment pool. That practice lasted up until the Port Authority took over the H&M in 1962, and the lettering remained in place on the cars for several years afterward.
Neat. Usually when you see documentaries about construction of the World Trade Center they discuss Radio Row, but not so much Hudson Terminal. Was just reading about “Ladies Cars” too on the PATH. There’s just something I like about the PATH a lot, probably it’s former links to the PRR, Lackawanna, CRRNJ…
Car 256 is preserved at the National Museum of Transport in St. Louis. It is the last surviving H & M car.
Thanks Bob! I would love to get out there.