Railroads instead settled upon ferry service across the watercourse to reach the island of Manhattan. A seven-story terminal, considered the largest in the nation, was completed in and featured a dramatic single-span roof with a width of feet. After detraining, passengers walked a short distance to the ferry terminal to board one of the double-decker vessels headed for Manhattan, Brooklyn or Staten Island.
Both crossed into Manhattan from the Bronx over the Harlem River. Under his leadership, the railroad weighed its options for crossing the Hudson, eventually settling on a pair of tunnels to run between Weehawken, N. In order to obtain a charter for a bridge, the railroad would have had to share its facilities with other carriers, and so tunnels, although expensive, became a more attractive option.
By this point, the city had banned steam locomotives within the urban core. Therefore, the network—including the tunnels—had to be run by the relatively new technology of electric catenaries. To comply with this mandate, a station known as Manhattan Transfer would be constructed at Harrison, N. Here, trains on the main line stopped to switch to electric locomotives to continue into Manhattan. Those headed for Jersey City and the ferry terminal continued to their destination under steam power.
Manhattan Transfer remained in operation until the s when the PRR completed the electrification of its main line. From the station, PRR trains traveled five miles across the Meadowlands to the Bergen Hill portal where they began their descent into the tunnels beneath the Hudson. After two years of design work, construction began in on the pair of single bore tunnels, located 70 feet below the surface of the river.
The cast iron tunnel lining is composed of numerous rings, each one being put into place and secured to its predecessor as rock, sand and mud was drilled, blasted and excavated.
When the lining was finally completed, workers then coated the interior with a two-foot thick layer of concrete to waterproof and strengthen the structure. The two ends of the northern tube met in Completed in , Sunnyside sprawled over acres and could accommodate more than 1, cars. A loop allowed trains to turn around without the need for a turntable. Concurrent with the tunnel work, excavation began at the site of Pennsylvania Station. More than houses and other structures had to be removed from the designated blocks, as the above-ground building occupied eight acres while the subterranean concourses and yards stretched across 28 acres.
Between and , the complex rose to an average of 69 feet above street level, or about six stories. The architect and his partners led what was then, and is still now, considered one of the greatest American architectural and design firms.
McKim, Mead and White were leading figures of the City Beautiful movement that took hold as the 19th century gave way to the 20th. Led by design professionals and progressives, the movement promoted the improvement of cities through rational order, sanitation and aesthetic enhancement. This last concept often meant looking back to Roman and Greek precedents that were deemed suitable for a young republic with great ambitions.
Using barrel vaults, both structures had managed to enclose large indoor spaces that accommodated thousands of users. Upon its completion in summer , Pennsylvania Station was described in glowing superlatives, touted as the biggest, grandest and most modern train station in the nation, and one of the finest in the world.
Although giving the impression of solid stone construction, the structure was erected with a steel frame clad in Milford pink granite.
Roughly , cubic feet of stone, 27, tons of steel and 15 million bricks were used during construction. On the principal 7th Ave. A portico marked by six Doric columns supported a seven-foot diameter clock. It was surrounded by sculptural decoration executed in Tennessee marble by German-born artist Adolph Alexander Weinman. The clocks, which dominated the four porticoed entrances on each side of the building, were adorned with wreaths of leaves upon which leaned two allegorical female figures representing time.
Flanking the clocks were trios of eagles, their outstretched wings ready for flight. Those arriving by automobile or carriage headed to the corner pavilions on 7th Ave.
Passing through the colonnade, the roadway descended to a subterranean level where entrances opened directly onto the general waiting room. Walking through the 7th Ave. Continuing down the passageway, travelers entered the loggia, which acted as a transition space to the waiting room, reached by a grand staircase.
Before descending to the waiting room, passengers had the option of passing to the left or the right through the loggia to enter the dining facilities, which included a lunchroom and a more formal restaurant.
A niche in the wall of the loggia held a statue of Cassatt, station plans at his side; he died four years before his railroad triumphantly entered New York City.
Moving down the staircase, travelers reached the floor of the waiting room, which was below street level and stretched almost the entire two block width of the building. Above, the plaster ceiling soared to feet, or about 15 stories, and was coffered in a bold octagonal pattern.
Barrel vaults running the length and width of the waiting room were visually supported by eight foot tall, seven-foot diameter fluted columns with ornate Corinthian capitals. Their pedestals dwarfed passengers, quickly giving a sense of scale and proportion.
Natural light again entered through eight thermal windows, 33 feet high at their midpoints, located just below the roofline. Over the years, countless photographers, both amateur and professional, waited patiently for the perfect moment to permanently capture shafts of light as they penetrated the windows and warmed the passengers below.
Six large panels below the windows were filled with murals depicting maps of the PRR system by painter Jules Guerin, known for luminous illustrations and dramatic perspectives.
His soft tones well matched the mellowness of the travertine that covered most of the walls. A favorite building material of the ancient Romans, the stone was a soft yellow-beige color, and gave warmth to large expanses that in darker color tones might seem impersonal and cold. It also had the added benefit of gaining a glowing sheen when touched and rubbed, as was sure to happen with thousands of daily passengers passing through the building.
Passenger services such as ticketing and the baggage check were arranged around the perimeter of the waiting room in a sequential fashion so that one could efficiently move from one area to the next without needlessly crisscrossing the vast room. While the rest of the station emphasized classical grandeur, the story concourse relied on the awe-inspiring power of modern industrial technology.
A forest of steel columns supported an extensive system of vaults covered almost entirely in glass. Coupled with glass block embedded into the floor of the passenger galleries surrounding the platforms, light reached all the way down to the tracks, located 36 feet below street level. Rather than enter the city through a dark and smoky train shed, Pennsylvania Station welcomed travelers with glorious light and soaring spaces unlike those found anywhere else in the nation.
The arrival and departure concourses were separated, allowing for the efficient movement of people, and early commentators marveled at the new technology of escalators. Legally, nothing could be done to stop the demolition, and popular outrage over the loss of the grand station prompted the city to institute a historic preservation ordinance and establish the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
It also galvanized preservation groups across the country in an era in which federally-sponsored urban renewal efforts, although often well-intentioned, were shattering urban neighborhoods. Careful, observant explorers can still find remnants of the original Pennsylvania Station, but most of the stone and sculptures were carted off to the New Jersey Meadowlands and dumped into a landfill. Thankfully, some elements were quietly salvaged and later donated to museums.
The first recorded European explorer to set sights on the island of Manhattan was Giovanni da Verrazano in , but he did not disembark to investigate. He sailed up the river that now bears his name in search of a Northwest Passage to India but failed in his quest and instead described the potential usefulness of the natural harbor.
At the time, Manhattan was home to bands of Lenape American Indians belonging to the Algonquian language family. The island held woodlands dominated by oak, maple and chestnuts while the shoreline, especially on the southern end, consisted of marshlands supporting diverse wildlife.
Trade in furs, particularly beaver, was soon established between Dutch merchants and the Lenapes. In , the first permanent Dutch settlement was made on Governors Island, and once a more substantial colonial population had developed, the village was moved to the southern tip of Manhattan. In , the colonists purchased Manhattan from the Lenape, and over the next few decades, Dutch settlements were made in all the boroughs now composing New York City. By the early s, the Dutch settlement on Manhattan, called New Amsterdam, had more than 1, residents.
Many remained involved in the fur trade while others nurtured agriculture fields outside of the village confines. Under the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant, a fortified wall was erected on the northern edge of the town between the Hudson and East Rivers to guard against attack by English forces that had settled further to the east.
A decade later, the city would briefly fall into Dutch hands once again until the English finally quashed Dutch ambitions in the region. The Dutch influence on the area remains particularly strong in the use of place names such as Flushing, Harlem and Brooklyn, all based on the names of Dutch towns that were corrupted when transliterated into English.
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