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Hudson Terminal was a rapid transit station and office-tower complex in the Radio Row neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Opened during 1908 and 1909, it was composed of a Railway terminal for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H&M), as well as two 22-story office skyscrapers and three basement stories. The complex occupied much of a two-block site bounded by Greenwich Street, Cortlandt, Church, and Fulton Streets, which later became the World Trade Center site.
The railroad terminal contained five tracks and six railway platform serving H&M trains to and from New Jersey; these trains traveled via the Downtown Hudson Tubes, under the Hudson River, to the west. The two 22-story office skyscrapers above the terminal, the Fulton Building to the north and the Cortlandt Building to the south, were designed by architect James Hollis Wells of the firm Clinton and Russell in the Romanesque Revival style. The basements contained facilities such as a shopping concourse, an electrical substation, and baggage areas. The complex could accommodate 687,000 people per day, more than Pennsylvania Station in Midtown Manhattan.
The buildings opened first, being the world's largest office buildings upon their completion, and the terminal station opened afterward. The H&M was successful until the mid-20th century, when it went bankrupt. The railroad and Hudson Terminal were acquired in 1962 by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which rebranded the railroad as Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH). The Port Authority agreed to demolish Hudson Terminal to make way for the World Trade Center, and the railroad station closed in 1971, being replaced by PATH's World Trade Center station. While the buildings were demolished in 1972, the last remnants of the station were removed in the 2000s as part of the development of the new World Trade Center following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company was incorporated in December 1906 to operate the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H&M), a passenger railroad system headed by William Gibbs McAdoo, which would use the tubes. The system connected Hoboken Terminal, Pavonia Terminal, and Exchange Place, three of the five major railroad terminals on the western shore of the Hudson River waterfront. At the time, there was high passenger traffic between New Jersey and Lower Manhattan. Passenger and mass-transit traffic in Jersey City was concentrated around the neighborhood of Exchange Place, while traffic in Lower Manhattan was centered south of New York City Hall. In addition, low construction costs and low property values were considerations in selecting the location of the railroad's Lower Manhattan terminal. The H&M only searched for sites west of Broadway, since there were more transit connections and fewer existing buildings west of that street.
Land acquisition for the buildings started in December 1905. The Hudson Companies acquired most of the two blocks bounded by Greenwich Street to the west, Cortlandt Street to the south, Church Street to the east, and Fulton Street to the north. Some low-rise buildings on Cortlandt Street were acquired to protect the views from the Hudson Terminal buildings. One landowner—the Wendel family, which owned a myriad of Manhattan properties—refused to sell their property, assessed at $75,000 (), and filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against H&M in which they spent $20,000 () on legal fees. By May 1906, H&M had taken title to most of the land. The acquired for the complex had cost an average of . The New York Times predicted that the development of Hudson Terminal would result in the relocation of many manufacturing plants from New Jersey to Lower Manhattan.
Excavations at the site of the office buildings were underway by early 1907, and the first columns for the substructure were placed in May 1907. Because of the presence of wet soil in the area, and the proximity of the Hudson River immediately to the west, a cofferdam was built around the site of the Hudson Terminal buildings. According to architectural writers Sarah Landau and Carl W. Condit, the cofferdam was five times larger than any such structure previously constructed. At the time, there was a lot of office space being developed in Lower Manhattan, even as the area saw a decrease in real-estate transactions. The project was completed for $8 million (equivalent to $ million in ). The buildings were owned by the H&M Railroad upon their completion.
The space in the office buildings was in high demand, and the offices were almost fully rented by 1911. The following year, McAdoo denied rumors that H&M would acquire the low-rise buildings on Greenwich Street to expand the Hudson Terminal buildings. Upon the tubes' opening, they were also popular with New Jersey residents who wanted to travel to New York City. Passenger volume at Hudson Terminal had reached 30,535,500 annually by 1914, and within eight years, nearly doubled to 59,221,354. Several modifications were made to the complex in the years after its completion. Smaller annexes were added to the office buildings at some point after they opened, during the early or mid-20th century.
A passageway to the Independent Subway System (IND)'s Chambers Street station was opened in 1949. The passageway measured wide and long. Construction contractor Great Atlantic Construction Company described the tunnel as "one of the most difficult of engineering feats", as the passageway had to pass above the H&M tunnels while avoiding various pipes, wires, water mains, and cable car lines.
Early tenants of the Hudson Terminal buildings included companies in the railroad industry; the offices of U.S. Steel; and some departments of New York City's general post office, which had been crowded out of its older building. U.S. Steel, the post office, and six railroad companies occupied , or over a third of the total space in the buildings. The top floors of each building had private dining clubs: the Downtown Millionaires Club atop the Cortlandt Building and the Machinery Club atop the Fulton Building. With the exception of a brief period between 1922 and 1923, the terminal's post office operated until the United States Postal Annex at 90 Church Street opened two blocks north in 1937. Space in the buildings was also occupied by agencies of the United States federal government in the 1960s.
The Port Authority ultimately took over the H&M as part of an agreement concerning the construction of the World Trade Center. The Port Authority had initially proposed constructing the complex on the East River, on the opposite side of Lower Manhattan from Hudson Terminal. As an interstate agency, the Port Authority required approval for its projects from both New Jersey's and New York's state governments, but the New Jersey government objected that the proposed trade center would mostly benefit New York. In late 1961, Port Authority executive director Austin J. Tobin proposed shifting the project to Hudson Terminal and taking over the H&M in exchange for New Jersey's agreement. On January 22, 1962, the two states reached an agreement to allow the Port Authority to take over the railroad, rebrand it as the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH), and build the World Trade Center on the Hudson Terminal site, which was by then deemed obsolete. The World Trade Center project would include a new PATH station to replace the Hudson Terminal station, as well as a public plaza to replace the buildings.
Groundbreaking on the World Trade Center took place in 1966, and as with the Hudson Terminal buildings, a slurry wall to keep out water from the Hudson River. During excavation of the site and construction of the towers, the Downtown Tubes remained in service, with excavations continuing around and below the tunnels. The Hudson Terminal station closed on July 2, 1971, to allow a three-day maintenance period to divert service to its replacement, the original World Trade Center PATH station. The World Trade Center station opened on July 6, 1971, west of the Hudson Terminal station. Just before the buildings' demolition, in early 1972, the New York City Fire Department used the empty Cortlandt Building for several fire safety tests, setting fires to collect data for fire safety. The Hudson Terminal complex was demolished by the end of 1972.
After the World Trade Center station opened, the sections of the Downtown Tubes between the Hudson Terminal and World Trade Center stations were taken out of service and turned into loading docks for the 4 World Trade Center and 5 World Trade Center buildings on Church Street. The original PATH station was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The last remnant of the Hudson Terminal station was a cast-iron tube embedded in the original World Trade Center's foundation near Church Street. The tube was above the level of the PATH station and the station's replacement after the September 11 attacks. The cast-iron tube was removed in 2008 during the construction of the new World Trade Center.
Lower Manhattan's topography made it impossible for the H&M to build a "stub-end" terminal, with the tracks oriented on a west–east axis and terminating at . Therefore, the Hudson Terminal station was arranged as a balloon loop connecting both of the Downtown Tubes. Trains entered from the south and exited from the north. The station ran perpendicularly to both of the Downtown Tubes, and at either end of the station, there were sharp curves to and from each tube, with track radii of . The eastbound tunnel ran under Cortlandt Street and the westbound tunnel ran two blocks north under Fulton Street.
Each of the platforms were long and could fit trains of eight cars. The platform widths were determined by the projected passenger loads for each track; the boarding platforms were wider than the alighting platforms and at least twice the width of the trains. The eastern side platform was wide because it was used only by alighting passengers from track 1, and the island platform for alighting passengers between tracks 4/5 was wide because track 5 was not used in regular service. The other three island platforms were wide because they each served two tracks that were used in regular passenger service. The engineers studied pedestrian traffic at the Brooklyn Bridge and other congested areas to determine the design of the station's ramps and staircases. There were six stairs from each alighting platform and four stairs to each boarding platform.
Except at the platforms' extreme ends, the platforms contained straight edges to minimize the gap between train and platform. The straight section of each platform was long. Other stations on loops—including the City Hall and South Ferry stations of the New York City Subway, built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT)—contained curved platforms, whose gaps between platform and train posed a great liability to passenger safety. Illuminated departure signs on each platform displayed the destinations of the trains on each track. The station was lit by incandescent lamps throughout.
To the north and south of the station, each end of the loop had a loading gauge large enough to fit one train. The cars required a clearance of above the tops of the rails, while the floor of the tunnel was below the tops of the rails. The single tubes of the Downtown Tubes enabled better ventilation of the station by the so-called piston effect. When a train passed through the tunnel, it pushed out the air in front of it toward the closest ventilation shaft, and also pulled air into the rail tunnel from the closest ventilation shaft behind it. The Hudson Terminal station also used fans to accelerate the movement of air.
The buildings occupied most of the site bounded by Cortlandt Street to the south, Church Street to the east, and Fulton Street to the west, with the northern building at 50 Church Street and the southern building at 30 Church Street. The site was also abutted by several low-rise buildings on Greenwich Street to the west. They were respectively called the Fulton Building and the Cortlandt Building, and were also collectively referred to as the Church Street Terminal. The buildings were separated by Dey Street, since the city government would not allow the street to be closed and eliminated.
The two buildings were otherwise designed similarly. The first through third stories of both buildings were parallelogram in plan, while the buildings contained H-shaped floor plans above the third story. The light courts of both buildings faced north and south, while the main corridors of each level on both buildings extended eastward from Church Street. The Cortlandt Building's light courts measured , while the Fulton Building's light courts were . The wings on either side of the light courts were of asymmetrical width. The main roofs of the buildings were carried to above ground. Small projecting "towers" with Roof pitch rose from the Church Street side of both buildings, rising to .
The two buildings were connected by a pedestrian bridge over the street on the third story of each building. A bridge connecting the buildings' 17th floors was approved and built in 1913, soon after the complex had opened.
The floors were generally made of reinforced concrete slabs placed between I-beams, with cinder concrete fill and yellow-pine finish. Terracotta tile, brick, and concrete was used to encase the structural steel frame. The I-beams were supported by columns or on . Large wind braces were not used; instead, the of the beams and girders were riveted to the columns with what the Engineering Record described as "a moment of stiffness equal or somewhat superior to the depth of the girder".
With a total rentable floor space of , some of which was taken by the H&M Railroad, the Fulton and Cortlandt Buildings were collectively billed as the largest office building in the world by floor area. Each building contained of office space on each floor; the Fulton Building had per floor and the Cortlandt Building per floor. The towers could house a combined ten thousand tenants across 4,000 offices. At ground level, the buildings contained glass-enclosed shopping arcades that were "much larger than the famous European arcades".
Four cement ramps, two each from Cortlandt and Fulton Streets, descended to the first basement level. The floor surface of each ramp is made of a compound of cement and carborundum. The original plans had called for one ramp each from Cortlandt and Fulton Streets and two from Dey Street, but the engineers deemed this to be impractical. There were also two bluestone staircases from Dey Street. At the end of each ramp or staircase, Karl Bitter designed a large clock face, and there was also a steel and glass marquee protruding onto the sidewalk. According to Landau and Condit, "At full capacity, the Hudson Terminal could accommodate 687,000 people per day; in comparison, Pennsylvania Station (1902–1910) was designed with a capacity of 500,000."
The basements were equipped with baggage handling facilities for the baggage trains traveling on Track 5. Two freight elevators carried baggage from Dey Street to the westernmost side platform or the baggage room in the third basement. Four elevators also transported baggage from the baggage room to the end of each of the island platforms. Each of the freight elevators had a capacity of , while each of the island-platform elevators had a capacity of . Thus, baggage could be transported to trains on any of the five tracks. The basements also contained a training school and break rooms for the H&M Railroad, as well as an ice-making plant, elevator hydraulic pumps, a generating plant, and a storage battery.
Hudson Terminal's electrical substation consisted of two rotary converters for the railroad and four rotaries for the buildings. This equipment was placed below ground level at Church Street. From the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Powerhouse in Jersey City, an 11,000-volt line of alternating current transmitted power to Hudson Terminal, where it was converted to 625 volts of direct current for the railroad and 240V DC for the offices.
The perimeter of the foundation was excavated using 51 pneumatic caissons, drilled to depths of between , with an average depth of . This required the underpinning of every building nearby. The caissons were made of reinforced concrete with walls. At this location, the underlying rock layer descended a maximum of beneath Church Street. Within the interiors of the enclosed cofferdam, 115 circular pits and 32 rectangular pits were dug. The steel columns supporting the superstructure were then placed in the pits; they weighed up to and could carry loads of . The entire lot area was then excavated to the second basement level. Part of the third basement was also excavated down to bedrock. Overall, of earth were excavated manually and excavated via caissons.
The main girders at the Hudson Terminal station's platform level were deep with flanges wide. The floor of this level was a Portland concrete slab thick. The platforms contained columns at intervals of about every . Some of the girders in the substructure were spaced irregularly because of the placement of the railroad platforms at the second basement level. Heavy sets of three distributing girders, encased in concrete, were used in these locations to support the weight of the Fulton and Cortlandt Buildings. Dey Street was carried above the mezzanine via a series of plate girders and I-beams, which formed a "skeleton platform" measuring about long by wide. The structure carrying Dey Street could accommodate loads of up to . In total, the substructure included of concrete and of structural steel.
There were several incidents in the H&M station as well. In 1937, a 5-car H&M train crashed into a wall, injuring 33 passengers. Twenty-six people were injured in a 1962 crash between two H&M trains at the terminal.
Opening and usage
By April 4, 1908, tenants started moving into the towers. Originally, the northern office building was called the Fulton Building while the southern office building was called the Cortlandt Building, reflecting the streets that they abutted. The H&M terminal opened on July 19, 1909, along with the Downtown Tubes. The combined rail terminal and office block was the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
Decline and demolition
H&M ridership declined substantially from a high of 113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958, after new automobile tunnels and bridges opened across the Hudson River. The H&M had gone bankrupt in 1954. The state of New Jersey wanted the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to take over the railroad, but the Port Authority had long viewed it as unprofitable. In 1958, the investment firm Koeppel & Koeppel offered to buy the terminal buildings for $15 million (equivalent to $ million in ), as part of a reorganization hearing for the H&M.
Railroad station
The terminal served H&M trains as well as those of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which interoperated on H&M trackage. The railroad terminal's construction was overseen by Charles H. Jacobs, chief engineer, and J. Vipond Davies, deputy chief engineer. The terminal was two stories below street level and consisted of five tracks numbered 1–5 from east to west. The tracks were served by four island platforms and two . All tracks had a Spanish solution layout with platforms on both sides, thereby enabling passengers to exit trains from one side and enter from the other. This removed conflicts between departing and boarding passengers. The width of the station averaged from west to east, and the station measured long from north to south.
Platforms and tracks
The station had been built with five tracks because, at the time of its construction, there were plans to build another pair of tunnels under the Hudson River near the Downtown Tubes. The H&M anticipated that two terminal tracks would be needed for each pair of tunnels; the fifth track was needed for flexibility. The additional tunnels were ultimately never built, and several subway tunnels were built very close to the Hudson Terminal complex. Track 5, the westernmost track, was used by baggage trains and was designated as the "emergency" track. The westernmost side platform, serving Track 5, was used for handling baggage, delivering coal, and depositing ashes from the buildings' power station. The easternmost side platform adjacent to track 1, as well as the island platforms between tracks 2/3 and 4/5, were used by alighting passengers only. The island platforms between tracks 1/2 and 3/4 were used by boarding passengers. The station was designed to accommodate a full trainload of 800 passengers every 90 seconds, the maximum capacity of the Downtown Tubes.
Surrounding infrastructure
The station tunnels contained provisions for an unbuilt extension northward to what is now the 34th Street–Herald Square station on the New York City Subway. If this extension had been built, it would have tripled the maximum number of trains that could go into the Hudson Terminal station. The sections of tunnel around the Hudson Terminal station were taken out of regular service when the World Trade Center station was built about to the west. The World Trade Center station could fit ten-car trains, and sat underneath Greenwich Street, which was oriented further northwestward compared to the Hudson Terminal station parallel to Church Street. Because it was longer than the Hudson Terminal station, a large jughandle curve was built from either tube to the World Trade Center station, surrounding the Hudson Terminal approach tracks. The sections of the tubes east of Greenwich Street were subsequently turned into loading docks serving 4 and 5 World Trade Center.
Connections
When the Hudson Terminal buildings opened, direct transfers were available to the IRT's Sixth Avenue elevated at Cortlandt and Church Streets, and to the Ninth Avenue elevated at Cortlandt and Greenwich Streets. The connection to the Sixth Avenue Line station, opened in September 1908, was via an elevated passageway from the third floor of the Cortlandt Building. In 1932, the Independent Subway System opened the Hudson Terminal station on its Eighth Avenue Line, though the IND station was operationally separate from the H&M station. Though the IND had also planned for a passageway between its Chambers Street station and the H&M's terminal in the original plan for the Eighth Avenue Line, a direct passageway to the Chambers Street station was not opened until 1949.
Towers
Hudson Terminal included two 22-story Romanesque-style office skyscrapers above the H&M station. The buildings were designed by architect James Hollis Wells, of the firm Clinton and Russell, and built by construction contractor George A. Fuller. Purdy and Henderson were retained as the structural engineers. Located on what would later become the World Trade Center site, the Hudson Terminal buildings preceded the original World Trade Center complex in both size and function. When the Hudson Terminal buildings opened, the height and design of skyscrapers was still heavily debated, and New York City skyscrapers were criticized for their bulk and density. Some of the city's early-20th-century skyscrapers were thus designed with towers, campaniles, or domes above a bulky base, while others were divided into two structures, as at Hudson Terminal. Furthermore, high real-estate costs made it impractical to build "anything but an office building" above the terminal.
Form
The Hudson Terminal buildings, along with 49 Chambers, were the city's first skyscrapers to include an H-shaped floor plan, with interior "light courts" to provide illumination to interior offices. The buildings' land lots originally occupied a combined . According to the Engineering Record, the Fulton Building occupied a lot measuring about , while the Cortlandt Building occupied a lot measuring about . However, the New-York Tribune gave slightly different measurements of for the Fulton Building and for the Cortlandt Building. By the mid-20th century, annexes had been added to both buildings, giving them a combined lot area of .
Facade
The designs for the buildings' facades called for Indiana limestone cladding below the fifth-floor cornice, and brick and terracotta above. The original proposal included rows of triple-height Doric order supporting the roof cornice. As built, the lowest four stories of each building were made of polished granite and limestone; each ground level bay was filled with glass. The top six stories of each building contained light-toned terracotta, as in the original plan. The corners of each building had light terracotta strips as well. Tall arches connected three of the top six stories. Because of the differing dimensions of the buildings, the Fulton Building had eighteen bays facing Church Street and nineteen facing Dey Street, while the Cortlandt Building had twenty-two bays facing Church Street and twenty facing Cortlandt Street.
Features
As completed, the buildings used 16.3 million bricks, 13,000 lighting fixtures, 15,200 doors, 5,000 windows, and of terracotta, as well as of partitions and of concrete floor arches. Also included in the buildings were many miles of plumbing, steam piping, wood base, picture molding, conduits, and electrical wiring.
Structural features
The superstructure of the Hudson Terminal buildings required over of steel, manufactured by the American Bridge Company. The superstructure of the Fulton Building was intended to carry a dead load of and a live load of , for total, while the Cortlandt Building could carry a dead load of and a live load of , for total. The columns were allowed to take a minimum stress of and a maximum stress of .
Interior
The towers had a combined 39 elevators, which could carry 30,000 people a day. This included 17 passenger elevators and a freight elevator in the Fulton Building, and 21 elevators in the Cortlandt Building. Of the 39 elevators in the buildings, 22 ran nonstop from the lobby to the eleventh floor while the remainder served every floor below the eleventh. Three of the elevators continued to the underground concourse, although the elevators did not descend to the concourse except during emergencies.
Basements
There were three stories of basements beneath the office buildings. The first basement level was a shopping and waiting concourse directly below the street. The second basement level contained the H&M platforms. The third and lowest level contained the baggage room, electrical substation, and an engine and boiler room for the substation. The depth of the H&M platforms was mandated by the city's Rapid Transit Railroad Commission. To provide space for potential north–south subway lines in Lower Manhattan, the roof of any "tunnel railroad" in the area had to be at least below any north–south street.
Facilities
The concourse, on the first basement level, contained ticket offices, waiting rooms, and some retail shops. It measured , much of which was open pedestrian space. The floor of the concourse was made of white terracotta with colored mosaic bands, while the columns and walls were made of plaster wainscoted with white terracotta. The concourse contained a dropped ceiling, concealing some utility pipes and wires placed beneath the main ceiling.
Substructure
The O'Rourke Engineering and Contracting Company were hired to build the complex's foundation. The foundation used irregular framing because of the presence of the tracks on the second basement level, and the cofferdam was said to be five times larger than any other similar structure previously constructed.
Notable incidents
During the complex's existence, the buildings experienced several incidents. Within a year of the office building's opening, in 1909, a man died after falling from a window in the Fulton Building; other deaths from falling occurred in 1927 and 1940. A bag full of explosives was found in the terminal in 1915, with enough explosives to blow up several buildings of the Hudson Terminal towers' size. The elevators were also involved in several accidents: two people were slightly injured by a falling elevator in 1923, and a woman was killed two years later after being trapped in an elevator. Phillips Petroleum Company executive Taylor S. Gay was also shot and killed in the terminal in 1962.
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Categories: 1908 Establishments In New York City, 1900s Architecture In The United States, Buildings And Structures Demolished In 1972, Demolished Buildings And Structures In Manhattan, Former Skyscrapers, Hudson River, Office Buildings Completed In 1908, Path Stations In Manhattan, Pennsylvania Railroad, Railroad Terminals In New York City, Railway Stations In Manhattan, Railway Stations In The United States Closed In 1971, Railway Stations In The United States Opened In 1909, Railway Stations Located Underground In New York, Skyscraper Office Buildings In Manhattan, Transit Hubs Serving New Jersey, Transportation In Hudson County, New Jersey, World Trade Center
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