New Jersey Central Railroad

New Jersey Central Railroad

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. In the 1960s and 1970s, the interstate highway system expanded truck transit and container shipping changed the requirements of port facilities, making the railyards of the Jersey City waterfront obsolete.

One of the earliest European settlements in what would become New Jersey was the village of Communipaw, located in the area where Liberty Science Center stands today, which was then at the edage of a shallow cove. In 1864 the Central Railroad of New Jersey built their terminal in Communipaw Cove, on made land reached by a causeway.

Over the following fifty years, the company would transform the oyster beds that had been harvested by the Dutch, and the Lenape before them, into a vast rail complex, as Lafayette was transformed into an industrial and port center. The land was acquired by the state in the 1970s, and transformed into Liberty State Park. The Central Railroad Terminal, as reconstructed in 1889, remains as a centerpiece of the park and a landmark of the Jersey City waterfront.

11/16/1954