It is now used as the waiting room and security screening point for the Statue of Liberty Ferries. The headhouse and concourse are preserved. The Bush train shed is a natural botanical garden. My photo essay is at:
http://railfan44.blogspot.com/2012/10/c ... ersey.html

I think you'll find it interesting. Enjoy. Comments, additions, and corrections are welcome.

Very nice. Thank you for sharing.

Marty -

Great building! Glad they found a way to preserve it. Nice photographic essay. Well done as usual.

Les

Mary,

"Botanical garden" is the best euphemism I have heard for the outright neglect of the train shed.

When the State of NJ began this preservation project, they had the termimal, trainshed, ferry headhouse, express building, multiple yard towers, coal dock and one somewhat-intact roundhouse.

All but the terminal and shed were destroyed in mix of intended demoliton and hamfisted "preservation."

The shed is ready to collapse. That "garden" is years of neglect.

At one point, the state was ready to bulldoze the shed - the largest Bush shed ever built. They have chosen to let nature be the wrecking crew.

Don't ask about the "preserved" ferry headhouse.

And yes, I am not overlooking the fact that the CNJ terminal has outlived all the other Jersey waterfront terminals except the DL&W, that is significant.


But it is a sore spot in NJ for what could/should have been.

Rob

Rob

Obviously you care about the station. Instead of complaining about the state's lack of funding to stem the deterioration, what have you done? Have you founded a non-profit to maintain and restore the train shed, rebuild the ferry headhouse, etc.?

I tried to find out who you are. Your web page does not load and your Twitter is too obscure. So I can't tell if you are involved in something more important and are just taking a pot shot.

I was happy to find what I did having only seen it from the other side of the River all these years. And you mention Hoboken Terminal. It is a true joy. The light rail facility, while a little far from the headhouse, is very well done and functional.

Hi Marty,

First, let me apologize for my typo calling you "Mary," and yes, my website has yet to recover from my hosting solutions latest "upgrade." ;-)

Yes, I care. I used to care more than I do now.

In the wayback machine, I had a lot of communication with state park officials, elected representatives and organizations such as the National Trust.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much room for anyone (private citizen, non-profit, or others) to have any sway with a beauracracy hellbent on the wrong path.

You have to remember, we are going back 25 years or more, when the Ellis Island "bridge" was the eyesore that got all of the attention while the state got out the bulldozers and removed all but the CNJ infrastructure you see today.

The last time I mounted my donkey and tilted at the state windmill, I was disgusted to learn that even though some of the on-site staff had a personal conviction to not let the trainshed fall to the same fate as the express building, the beauracracy would not stand for it.

Some non-CNJ equipment was brought in for display, and the Bush jungle continued to grow.

There are some folks trying to bring some greater form of railroad preservation to the park, and I hope they succeed.

If you look into what really happened to the ferry headhouse (which was much more of a complex structure than the interpretation leads one to beleive) you'll start to understand the long-standing malaise that has seen the terminal gloriously restored and the rest of the complex bulldozed or abandoned. It is not the only short-sighted, state preservation project in NJ.

But that is the glass half-empty.

The glass half-full version is happy the terminal building was saved, is ecstatic the Hoboken Terminal has made a full comeback (without the once-planned hockey arena upstairs) and that both have outlived the North River terminals of the LV, PRR, Erie, NYC, etc...

Most importantly, don't take my POV as a knock on your post. What has been saved is special and worth a visit, but like a screenwriter who knows what was cut from the script, I am cursed to remember a) what should have been b)what could have been and c) what the plan originally was.

None of that takes away from today's visitors... it only bothers those who hoped the state would truly preserve the "site" not just the terminal and concourse.



Rob

Robert John's comments remind me, as so much else does, that we rail preservationists "don't get no respect." What got preserved was the pretty stuff; what's been neglected are those old, smoky, "19th century" trains and the old, smoky, dirty, "ugly" things that made them go.

"We don't get no respect, no respect at all!"

Glad we do have what we do, but oh, what we've missed. . .

Easy now.

Here is one line from my adult non-railfan son's comments on the pictures, " I like the overgrown train bumpers -- how it will look when civilization crumbles."

Sort of fits into the above comments???

Robert has been in the industrial preservation arena probably for as long as I have. His "Ahead of the Torch" website was around when the Internet was still in its infancy. Widely regarded as an expert in IA in NY/NJ and beyond.

That trainshed is NOT a botanical garden! It looks like what we have been trying to eradicate for the last two years at Carrie Furnaces.

I really believe you're right with that comment. Botanical garden in my mind would suggest something grown on purpose, in specific places and of varying types of plants. The photos show to me just a bunch of local plants that have sprung up since people quit trying to keep the green out. I can't see how you'd call that a "botanical garden" in the classic sense at all. That, and the fence that looks like what you'd see around a construction site, looks more like an area that hasn't been worked on and is fenced off to avoid people getting hurt in the meantime.

Regardless of the parsing over the definition of what " a botanical garden" represents, I enjoyed the documentation aspect of it's current state in your photos inasmuch as today's photos will be tomorrow's historical record. A basis of comparisons to the past. They are of a wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed them, not being able to be there personally. Thanks for posting this. It's a wonderful building.

I served on the Commission in the mid 90's tasked with recommending to the legislature and the Governor the path forward towards creating a NJ Transportation Heritage Center.

It was my strongly held belief that the Liberty State Park site was the natural place as it was rich in history ( approx. 1/3 of those who came to America through Ellis Island went through the CRRofNJ depot to board a train for their journey into the country, the Delaware canal began at this location etc.) it was where the CRRofNJ,Reading and B&O railroads had a major presence and the State and Feds had invested $ 40 million dollars restoring the CRRof NJ head house that would have made an excellent display facility.

LSP attracts over 3 million visitors a year that come to board the ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island or visit the Liberty Science Center, and thus with just 10% of these we would have had an ample "gate" to make the new center financially self sufficient.

It was my opinion that the only way we were going to get it funded was to attract sufficient corporate sponsorships to create a public/private partnership with the State, the same formula that funded the Liberty Science Center.

Kodak and IBM were the anchor co-sponsors of the Science Center for one principal reason. Eyeballs. LSP is located immediately adjacent to the hyper busy NJ Turnpike and between that busy road and the established annual visitors it was a good commercial buy. The same would have worked for the Transportation Center.

Very sadly a clique within the Commission ended up convincing the majority to vote in favor of Phillipsburg,NJ a down on its luck community in far western NJ with next to no tourism appeal. There was less than zero chance of getting any corporate sponsorship interest there and after 5 years of wasting about $ 750,000 taxpayer dollars the whole thing died.

Darn shame as it could have been a home run.

As the old saying goes....you can lead 'em to water.....

Ross Rowland

I feel really ignorant asking this, but are the signs in the Concourse relatively new? They look too good to have been from the heyday of the CNJ.

Who was it that wanted to put the trolley and bus collection in there?

Later!
Mr. Ed