Greenville Yards - from the water

Greenville Yards - from the water

Jersey City's role as the region's prime railroad center was vital to the operation of the Port of New York and New Jersey. Goods shipped east by train were transferred to New York and New Jersey piers by lighters and by car floats, introduced in 1866, or else loaded onto some of the few freighters which docked on the New Jersey side of the port. The pictures shown here were taken in 1954, in the waning years of the city's railroad industry. They illustrate the movement of freight from the Jersey Central facility, where liberty State Park is now located, and from Harsimus Cove and the Greenville Yards of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The Greenville Yards, the world's most complete freight transfer facility, were constructed by the Pennsylvania on landfill between 1900 and 1912. Beginning in 1920, the Lehigh Valley Railroad built out their Claremont Terminal site from the foot of Chapel Avenue.

Most operations were phased out in the 1970s, but the Cross Harbor Railroad Terminal Corporation began business on the site, now owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The only remaining piece of the working waterfont of Jersey City, Greenville Yards has remained an integral part of the Port of New York and New Jersey as the port has been restructured to accommodate container shipping. In 2014, Superstorm Sandy delivered the final blow to much of the aging infrastructure depicted in this series.

Redevelopment of the site expanded operations into new piers on the Bayonne side of the border, while the interior of the old Greenville Yards is now a complex of warehouses, and the Claremont Terminal is a vast scrap metal facility. In 2019 work was completed on the expanded site, now known as Global Container Terminal's Bayonne ExpressRail Port Jersey.

11/16/1954