After four of its predecessors burned to the ground at the site, Kenneth Mackenzie Murchison was commissioned to design a fire-proof terminal for the Lackawanna Railroad at Hoboken. To attract business from the nearby Central Railroad, whose terminal was in Jersey City, Murchison was charged with designing the most conspicuous place along the Hudson River. Like other Victorian structures, his is not a pure expression of one style but borrows freely from neo-classical, Georgian revival, beaux arts and, with its abundant use of the newly invented incandescent light bulb, Murchisons cathedral of transportation clearly references another conspicuous waterfront marvel at the time: Luna Park at Coney Island. With coal as fuel, the belching engines soot and smoke had to go somewhere. Large, balloon style structures in the European tradition allowed for these to rise, but Lincoln Bushs unique train shed design was a dramatic departure which permitted the smoke to escape through a narrow gap between the glass gull-wing designs, the glass itself being coated to permit natural cleaning of the particulate from the glass when it rained. Sadly, the glass panels have been replaced with slabs of concrete, which does not allow light to pass onto the platforms as originally conceived. In 1973, the entire terminal site and the Lincoln Bush gull-wing platform sheds were added to the National Registers of Historic Places and as the last surviving ferry / rail terminal complex in the Country, NJ Transit has been mandated by the New Jersey Historic Sites Council to obtain National Landmark Status for the site, affording it the highest preservation protections in the USA.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 02:42:40 +0000
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