FOR some reason, I failed to include this in the recent online zoom chat I gave regarding mosaic subway art. I’m unsure whether to post the rest in Forgotten NY, since they’re all so good, or save them in case I want to do the chat again in the future.
This plaque cannot be viewed in its station anymore, only in one preserved specimen at the Transit Museum. The IRT Cortlandt Street station opened in 1918 and was completely destroyed on 9/11/01. The MTA moved quickly to restore service on the #1 line, but the station was closed and completely rebuilt for several years: it now opens into the new Sergio Calatrava Oculus PATH station.
The boat in the mosaic isn’t Robert Fulton’s Clermont. Rather, it’s a ferry connecting the west end of Cortlandt Street with Paulus Hook in Jersey City. The mosaic was either designed by Squire Vickers or his associate Herbert Dole. Vickers served as the subways’ primary design chief from 1908 to about 1940.
According to NY Waterway, “The Jersey City Ferry was a major ferry service that operated between Jersey City in New Jersey and Cortlandt Street in lower Manhattan for almost 200 years (1764-1949). The ferry was notable for being the first to use steam power which began in 1812. The ferry’s history was closely tied to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s station in Jersey City at Exchange Place, which gradually fell into disuse after the railroad opened the North River Tunnels and Penn Station in 1910. Ferry service from lower Manhattan to Jersey City continued via the even older Communipaw ferry which operated from the adjacent Liberty Street Ferry Terminal until this service was also discontinued in 1967. In 1986 ferry service was revived and today it is operated by New York Waterway.”
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5/1/25
8 comments
The Cortlandt St IRT station was one of my favorites in the system. Some old school touches like the mosaics and tiles with some modern glazed brick, then you’d walk into the gloriously 1970s modern-ish WTC concourse. I’ve been to that part of town twice since 9/11. I can’t go there anymore, it just hurts too much, and I get turned around because all those geographic references are gone. It’s a completely different layout that the one I grew up in.
Just to add some more historical content – the tunnel itself was rebuilt and opened about a year later in 2002 but the station remained in a “shell” format (behind walls) because it was decided that it would be included in the overall rebuilding of the WTC site. Because of disagreements between the MTA and the Port Authority the station did not reopen until early September 2018, nearly 17 years after the attack
with more work to be done into 2019. The station name was changed officially to “WTC Cortlandt” as shown on the subway map (although the signs on the platform walls have “World Trade Center” and no mention of Cortlandt). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTC_Cortlandt_station
The various Hudson River ferries were all operated by railroads which had terminals on the Hudson’s west bank. The Jersey City – Cortlandt Street ferries were part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). After Penn Station opened in 1910, the PRR’s s main Jersey City station at Exchange Place solely became the domain of commuter trains whose customers worked in Lower Manhattan, for whom Penn Station was not a convenient terminal. Two other factors eventually killed this ferry route in 1949 – the Hudson Tube trains (today’s PATH) and the Holland and Lincoln Tunnel (opened in 1927 and 1937 respectively). The former service was jointly operated by the PRR and the Hudson Tubes, and of course is very much alive and well today. The two tunnels eventually siphoned off the vehicular traffic that used the PRR and other Hudson ferries, and also spawned a large commuter bus network competing with the railroads.
The nearby Communipaw ferry to Jersey City, from the adjacent Liberty Street Terminal, was part of the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ). Its closest subway station was also the IRT at Cortlandt St. That ferry’s April 1967 closing was part of a major restructuring of commuter rail services between Manhattan, Newark, and various commuter suburbs in Union, Somerset, Middlesex, Mercer, and Monmouth Counties. CNJ trains that used Communipaw and its Manhattan ferry connection were re-routed to the PRR Newark Penn Station, where commuters transferred to PRR trains for Midtown Manhattan or PATH trains for Lower Manhattan. CNJ was able to close its costly ferry operation and Jersey City terminal, made possible because PATH’s modernization in the mid-1960s added capacity to accommodate the former ferry riders.
The final Hudson River railroad ferry, the Erie-Lackawanna (EL)service between Barclay Street and the still-in-use Hoboken train terminal, ended in November 1967, also replaced with expanded PATH train service. As noted, it would be 19 years before Hudson ferry service was revived. The various commuter railroads are all part of NJ Transit today.
The architect is Santiago Calatrava.
I’m still not fond with what went at the WTC site and just wished they rebuilt the Twin Towers instead, which would have cost much less than what’s there now even with updated safety modifications.
Unfortunately, the Twin Towers could not be rebuilt as they originally stood. Building Code changes, and an updated awareness of security and safety concerns, made that impossible.
Actually that was possible as buildings are known for updating their building codes via renovations, so this claim was really just used as an excuse to not have them back along with so many other excuses used by those who were opposed to that, and I even mentioned them in the book known as Debacle: Failing to Rebuild the Twin Towers.
Kevin, your online zoom chat on the subway mosaics was great, thanks! Two things that were discussed, however, require comment.
The first was about the South Ferry mosaic. Instead of showing a “modern” ferryboat, which is double-ended and could accommodate passengers and vehicles, it shows a schooner. Also known as a periauger, it is exactly the type of boat that was used as a ferry in the early 1800’s. It was this type of boat that Cornelius Vanderbilt used to take passengers and freight between Staten Island and South Ferry as the starting point for his empire.
The second regards the old City Hall
Loop station on the IRT. When the station was taken out of service in 1945, one of the reasons was that it was too short to accommodate the longer 10-car trains. Another was the curvature of the platform in conjunction with the redesign of the subway cars. The early IRT cars were built like old-fashioned railroad cars, with entry at the vestibules at the car ends. That had the doors relatively close to the platform edge, since they were at the coupling point of the train cars. Even then, it was recognized as an issue. If you look at the City Hall Loop platform today, you cans see where stanchion posts were once bolted to the platform. This is where people entered and exited the doors and provided some security and a hand-hold. Later subway car designs had the doors placed on the middle sides of the cars, which is where the largest gaps between the subway cars and the curving platform occur. Unless very expensive mechanical expansion grates were installed, the gap was too large to be safely used. As the station would still have been too short, it was abandoned instead.