Back between Jersey City and Hoboken, the light rail trains pass this stop, which really ought to be announced by a recorded pirate voice:

After leaving Hoboken Terminal, and just as they pull out of the Lincoln Harbor station, where I disembark, the light rail trains pass beneath the “Helix”, a curved causeway that brings Route 495 off of the Palisades and down into the Lincoln Tunnel. The views from the Helix are spectacular.

Lincoln Harbor is a drab, sterile development that includes a marina, a couple of strange housing/something-else piers, and a blue office complex that includes this gem of a food court:

But at least this is where the bus stops, and it’s on time. Route 158 follows River Road up the narrow plane between the Hudson and the Palisades. Good views of the west side of Midtown are off to the right the whole way:

The road has been developed quickly over the last few years, and there’s now a great deal of expensive, low-quality housing crammed in between it and the river.

Condos start at $600,000 in “Grandview II at Riverwalk”, and the developer, K. Hovnanian, promises “an enticing shopping promenade” in the neighborhood. But the commercial options in this area are bland strip malls like this one, which turns its back on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the tower of Riverside Church.

But not to worry. There’s something pretty neat coming up.

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The lighting the day that I made this trip didn’t favor photos of the riverfront park that has replaced the Lackawanna’s freight piers, so I’ll spare you. These are pictures of the commercial area near Washington Street and the railroad terminal.

From Hoboken, I hopped back on the light rail to move up the river.

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This photo, from the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) at the Library of Congress, suggests the magnitude of the facility. The passenger terminal is at the bottom of the photograph, with its trainshed on the left, waiting room in the middle, and ferry terminal on the right. Off the bottom of this photograph were more large docks for unloading coal and produce.

Today, Hoboken Terminal serves several of NJ Transit’s commuter lines. The waiting room was renovated several years ago, to great effect. Photographs from the Library of Congress suggest that, until this room was renovated, its ornate Tiffany skylight sported blackout paint from the Second World War.

The exterior of the terminal is sheathed in copper. This is the main entrance; to the right is the trainshed, and to the left is the ferry terminal. Like the CRRNJ terminal featured in the Jersey City page, this terminal was built primarily to move passengers from their trains onto ferries that went to Manhattan, not to directly serve the town in which it was located, so the exit to the city is a bit awkward compared to the smooth rail-to-boat flow.

The entrance has “Lackawanna R.R.” over the door because this was built as the terminal of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad. It merged with the Erie Railroad in 1960 to form the Erie-Lackawanna, and, following a bankruptcy declaration, the E-L was folded into the Federal Government’s Conrail. Portions of the former Lackawanna are today operated by Norfolk Southern.

From just south of the terminal, we can see what has become of the Erie Railroad’s terminal, which was abandoned in the 1960s as its functions were merged into the Lackawanna’s facility. The group of tall buildings on the right hand side of the following photograph are part of the Newport development, built from the 1980s onwards on the site of the Erie’s terminal. (The PATH station now called “Pavonia/Newport” still has ornamental “E”s on the tops of columns from when it served the Erie.) A large mall sits on the waterfront (it features all of the shopping options available elsewhere, but in more depressing surroundings). The last tall building on the left in the photograph is the Goldman Sachs building in Jersey City, and the squat tan building near the middle of the photograph is a ventilation tower for the Holland Tunnel. In the foreground is a pile field left over from one of the Lackawanna’s dismantled freight docks.

Even though Hoboken Terminal’s waiting room has been refurbished, the ferry terminal has not; it is closed to the public and has been replaced by a smaller new facility adjacent to the trainshed. The doors to the ramps leading to the ferry area were open when I was there, and I got a few pictures that hint at the enormous ferry concourse that lies beyond in disrepair.

Hoboken’s city center is very close to the terminal.

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Well, the so-called Gold Coast is doing very well for itself. There really has been an explosion of high-end construction, and the light rail line lives up to the rumors of snazziness. There’s something deeper, too. In its transformation from heavy industry to offices and apartments, this area is an exemplar of the shift from manufacturing to high-tech services that has made the U.S. so prosperous in the last several decades.

Here, I present my attempt to come to my own understanding of a small bit of New Jersey by venturing through it myself. The journey was long. The transfers were many. But all you have to do is look at photos and read text.

Click on the map below to begin.

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