Although Journal Square station developed into the de facto heart of the Tubes, in the original planning it was Exchange Place station which had a special status. When the Tubes were being designed, Journal Square (then still called Summit Avenue) was relatively insignificant commercially and  the business heart of Jersey City centered on Exchange Place. But still more decisive for the attention paid to the Exchange Place Station was the existence of the Jersey City Pennsylvania Station. 

This station, opened July 19, 1909, was located at Exchange Place and was the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad for New York City. Although the PRR believed that the opening of the New York Pennsylvania Station (which occurred just after the opening of the Tubes) would take over all or almost all of the long distance passengers, the railroad still expected a large stream of commuter and local passenger traffic into the Jersey City Pennsylvania Station. 

[In fact, the Jersey City station was in operation until the beginning of the 1960s but with a very low passenger count at the end. On November 17, 1961 the Jersey City Terminal was abandoned after 127 years and PRR passenger trains made their last runs between Jersey City and Newark The last service was seven eastbound and six westbound trains; last departure is 5:05, The Broker, to Bay Head Jct.]

 Three elevators, extremely large and fast for the time of construction, connected the tube station with the street and with the Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal. 

For these reasons the H&M planned an expansive layout for Exchange Place station, a layout which soon showed itself unnecessary because the importance of the Jersey City Pennsylvania Station sank much more quickly than had been expected and because the economic life of Jersey City moved westwards, away from the river and Exchange Place to Journal Square. Comparing the c 1900 image of the Montgomery Street side  of the Pennsylvania Railroad terminal, one is looking eastwards; the brick and cream hotel in the lower image [looking westwards] is the extension of where the terminal had been. The clickable postcard view is from the river and is looking almost exactly to the site where the large picture below of the east head house is located. The Colgate Clock is now at ground level.

Contemporary accounts report Exchange Place station as being  blasted out of solid rock 85 feet below street level. The station was almost 1,000 feet long, 150' wide and was apparently directly under the PRR station. Its walls and roof were finished with concrete. 

 The station was originally designed for 4, if not 5, tracks two of which were to be for through trains to Manhattan, two for local trains terminating at the PRR Station. Initial plans called for Exchange Place being  the H&M's branch off point to the Central Railroad of New Jersey terminal on Johnson Avenue. [Click the image to see the planned route full size.]

It was assumed that the majority of passenger traffic would be entering the H&M station from the PRR station, not from the street. Consequently of the six elevator entrances at the station  two lead from the PRR station to the street, while four elevators were to run between the PRR's platforms and the H&M Exchange Place platforms. [Two of the four elevators to the H&M platforms were replaced by escalators in the PATH period.]

The Exchange Place station is directly at the river bank approximately 84 feet below ground. The enlargeable image to the left sows both head houses, each of which has an entrance to the station. The recently constructed dark red and cream brick east entry building [closer to the viewer] has a strong stylistic relationship to the Pavonia airshaft, with its curved corners. One enters the station through this entry via a triple bank of 88 foot escalators flanked by two stairways.

On the opposite side of the square in the cream colored base of the skyscraper is the second [west] head house entryway to the station, the one using elevator access. In the second image "on land", the rebuilt head house with the escalator entrance on the site of the old Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal entrance is to the left; to the right across the square [on the side of the building where the Katyn Memorial is located] is the entrance to the west head house with the elevator entrance. [More on these two entrances below.]

The two tube tunnels coming from lower Manhattan begin to spread apart from one another, so that the station is almost 150 feet wide. This is in very sharp contrast to the other, narrow, underground stations.

There are two tracks whose platforms are connected to one another through relatively long pedestrian tunnels. The [west] tunnel seen below is the narrower of the two passenger cross tunnels and it's exits  lead to the elevator exit in the west head house. Overall, Exchange Place gives the general  impression of a Tube station in London. 

Reconstruction after the PA takeover resulted in the new street entrance with escalators that is located approximately where the original exit to the Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal had been. That exit had been shut down before the PA takeover and the elevator was replaced by an escalator. Here is the street level turnstile entrance in the east head house as well as the rather garishly neon-lit escalator.  In the other [west] entry the  original elevators were replaced by the current two 88 foot rise elevators in the original shafts.

The two tracks that are in service now were to be the express tracks or through tracks for lower Manhattan.

Only one of the three additional tracks that had been planned to terminate in the station and which were designed for the suburban traffic from/to the Jersey City Pennsylvania Station was completed. This stub, sometimes called the "Penn Pocket" did not serve the original function of being a connection for service terminating in Jersey City but was used for switching. 

Before the Islamic terrorist attacks on America the platforms could handle seven car trains which came from Hoboken. The eight car JSQ-Newark trains did not open the doors of the front car. The enlargeable diagram to the left is from the Terry Kennedy collection and shows the complexity of the layout. After the terrorist attacks on New York, Exchange Place itself was undamaged but was impractical to access because of the lack of a track set-up to have the trains change direction. Discussions were held on the feasibility of re-using the original trackage for turning trains until a new World Trade Center terminal is constructed. Basically, the station was made closer in function to the way it had been designed at its opening.

Such re-building got underway, in fact, by May 2002. The view above of the  Exchange Place platform during the construction appears to be "normal"; major activity, however, is going on at the west end of the station where the "pocket" track was located and where the lines branch off to Grove Street [westwards] and Pavonia [northwards].  Compare the enlargeable construction picture to the same site on re-opening day.

At the east end of the station where there was severe water damage between Exchange Place and the World Trade Center site from broken water mains and the fire fighting efforts a major refurbishment of the trackage and electrical equipment and signals was completed. It is said that all that remained of the original downtown tunnels under the North River was the external structure and that everything else had been replaced and modernized.  

Additionally, the station's platforms were lengthened so they can handle 10-car trains instead of the former limit of 7/8-car trains.  This view shows the status looking eastwards to the World Trade Center on June 29, 2003  when Exchange Place was functioning as a terminal.

The Port Authority colored sketch shows the changes to the trackage at Exchange Place that allows the station to be used now as a  terminal until the World Trade Center station is re-opened. Click the small image to see the plans full size. The enlargeable black and white trackage graphic is from New York Rail.org. 

The remodeled Exchange Place Station re-opened to traffic on June 29, 2003 as a combined through and terminal station. The through function resumed on November 23,2003 when the temporary World Trade Center Station went into service and the routes returned to normal.

Every year there is less and less remaining from the Hudson & Manhattan RR days. Still at Exchange Place, even after the major rebuilding caused by the Islamic terrorist attacks on America, there is this H&M manhole cover on the north platform. Click the smaller image to the left to see details.

Until its destruction in the Islamic terrorist attack on New York, the PATH World Trade Center ("WTC") station replaced the Tubes' Hudson Terminal (which was often referred to as Cortlandt Street and which went into service July 19, 1909). Hudson Terminal straddled Dey Street and was bounded on the north by Fulton Street, on the south by Cortlandt Street, on the east by Church Street and on the west by Greenwich Street. As noted earlier, in 1909 the H&M erected over the station Hudson Terminal, the world's then largest office complex which consisted of two skyscrapers.

At the time of its erection Hudson Terminal was viewed as the actual downtown Manhattan terminal of the six railroads that terminated on the New Jersey shore: Lehigh Valley, New York, Susquehanna and Western, West Shore Railroad, Erie Railroad, Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, Pennsylvania. It also was viewed as the terminal for the railroads to the west and the Pacific., even though the connections was made by the H&M. [Even this timetable from the late 1950s still shows the Tubes as part of the U.S. Class I railroad system.]

Hudson Terminal occupied a double block bounded by Church, Fulton, Cortlandt and Greenwich Streets. Dey Street ran between the two buildings and above it ran a pedestrian bridge connecting the buildings half way up.

Just as "the bathtub" was unusual engineering in constructing the WTC, Hudson Terminal's foundation was a coffer dam that was five times larger than any ever constructed  before: 400' x 175' x 75'. The tunnels to and from New Jersey were constructed in additional coffer dams.

The buildings were in Italian Renaissance style, but on a grand scale: 22 stories and 263 feet high, reaching 75 feet below ground and built on concrete and rock with a total of 18,500,000 cubic feet and were designed by Clinton & Russell, the architectural firm of the contemporaneous Hotel Astor. The materials were granite and limestone up to the fourth floor and then brick and terra cotta the rest of the height. All the public area was floored in marble. The cost of the buildings in contemporary dollars was $8,ooo,ooo [or over $150,000,000 in 2003 dollars.]

Each of the [almost] twin buildings had 39 elevators. Just as in the WTC which replaced them, the buildings' elevators were divided between express and local. In Hudson Terminal each building had 22 express elevators. There were both stairways and elevators from the concourse level to the platforms although the elevators were limited in number and appear to have been used mostly for baggage.

The Tubes and Hudson Terminal were constructed in an age of civic pride. Ordinary people felt a close kinship with their city and were also impressed by statistics. The H&M's public relations office did not disappoint them.

It was announced that the Hudson Terminal's plumbing totaled 16 miles, or the length of Broadway, "the longest street in the world". In describing the tile that was used in the buildings, reports noted that the 1,300,000 square feet of tile would form a 1 foot square column that "would tower 246 miles high. Should it then topple over and fall in a direct line with Syracuse New York, it would cut a channel through that city that would startle its natives."

In the Cortlandt Building each floor had 26,000 square feet, while in the [north] Fulton Building each floor had 18,000 square feet. The buildings' official entrance is on Church Street [just as the temporary WTC entrance is,- maybe from different side of street] and each building had on its roof a restaurant, prefiguring Windows on the World in the WTC: on top of the Cortlandt building was The Railroad Club [reflecting Hudson Terminal's function as a major railroad terminal], while the Fulton building was topped by The Machinery Club.

As can be seen in the expandable drawing above, above the concourse on the street level was The Arcade, a glass enclosed passenger promenade with stores. Underneath the two towers was the station itself, Hudson Terminal, with entrances from Cortlandt, Dey and Fulton Streets.

Two of the entrances, at first called "runways", were via 40 foot wide ramps and shallower than usual stairs to speed the flow of passengers between the street and the concourse. The total space under the two buildings and the intervening Dey Street was taken up by the passenger concourse. The concourse offered ticket offices for the Class I railroads as well as a multitude of stores and services, from barbers, to florists, to restaurants, to newsstands, etc. [Click the sketch below to see the full view.] A pedestrian "subway" connected to the new IRT subway.

Stairways led from the concourse down to track level where the two tunnels coming from Exchange Place spread out into a five track loop with six platforms; two additional tunnels were planned from Hudson Terminal to the Erie Railroad Station in Jersey City but only very minor work was ever done on them. 

This photo from the 1950s shows one very small section of the commercial concourse at Hudson Terminal.

As also the case with Erie, 33rd Street and Hoboken, the platforms at Hudson Terminal were designed to separate passengers who boarding  and alighting from the same train. In the case of Hudson Terminal this crowd control was particularly necessary, with over 30 million passengers using the station in the 12 months ending on March 31, 1914; these passengers had been brought in and out of the station on the 858 trains operating workdays [then, Monday through Saturday]. [See Gallery 2 Stations for more information on Hudson Terminal.]

On January 18, 1964 the Port Authority published the plan for a World Trade Center on the site of Hudson Terminal; it's kernal was to consist of two 110-story office buildings, which at 1,350 feet, ironically the highest offfice buildings in the world at the time of their erection, just as Hudson Terminal had been ats its completion. By September 1968 Port Authority had completed demolition of 50 Church Street[ i.e. the north building of Hudson Terminal]. By October 1968 the excavation for the World Trade Center west of Greenwich Street had reached a level that it exposed the westbound PATH tube, which was then supported on a cradle in the open air 18 feet above the World Trade Center's floor slab; the excavation and support of the eastbound tube began in December 1968. On December 29, 1968 the Port Authority announced it was building a new PATH station under the World Trade Center with the capacity for 10-car trains, vs. the 6 cars at Hudson Terminal [which wound up not being demolished].

Below the WTC the original five track Hudson Terminal station with its five-tracked loop was replaced with a new five-tracked loop with less severe curves and was renamed WTC. At the time of its opening, WTC was said to be the first fully air-conditioned subway station in the world. The World Trade Center carried on  Hudson Terminal's plan of a concourse with stores and services above the train platforms but on a much grander scale.

Here the Tubes/PATH tracks are approximately 80 feet below the street and on the lowest level of a muti-level subway interchange, with  the IND, BMT and IRT trackage lying above them. The next level above the PATH tracks was the entry level with fare card machines and station personnel. From here a bank of eight extremely long escalators rose up to the shopping concourse, as large as many suburban malls, that lay under the World Trade Center complex. The station was the single busiest one of the system with up to 70,000 passengers a day. Several months before the terrorist attacks plans had been announced for a major renovation of the WTC station.

There had been proposals to use the [surprisingly still extant] Hudson Terminal turning loop for downtown service until the World Trade Center station was rebuilt. Hudson Terminal closed and the WTC station opened on July 6, 1971.

After the Islamic terrorist attacks the downtown station was buried by demolition and clearance activities and out of service for over two years. On November 23, 2003 a temporary station was opened on the site of the first WTC station [not on the site of the Hudson Terminal loop] and is designed to function only until the permanent station is completed as part of the building of a downtown transportation hub.

The same but different. Essentially the station is the same as when it was the WTC station: four levels with a long escalator ride between the concourse [2nd ] level and the mezzanine [3rd] level. There are five tracks served by three platforms in the same layout as in the WTC station. All is where it was before or else there is space left for it.

What is different from the destroyed station is that the temporary station is basically a shell on the edge of the construction site of the World Trade Center. it covers essentially the exact same area as before: the access to the New York subways, entrances to PATH's tracks, space for stores are all in the same positions as had existed before. All appears now as a plain shell which is being worked on. Click here for a Youtube video overview of the temorary WTC Station.

At the present time the trains coming from Jersey City and Hoboken travel under the river as in the past; but because of the construction they now emerge into the daylight as they enter the station loop which now has natural light on three sides, although it is 80 feet below ground level. A unique experience that will not last long.

The station is the first one to accept both PATH's  Quickcard as well as the New York City subway system's Metrocard.

Additional pictures of the temporary station are in the Tubes Station Gallery and an eyewitness description of the station on it's opening day is here.

Both Hoboken (opened February 25, 1908) and 33rd Street (opened in its original form November 10, 1910) are stub terminal stations: Hoboken  with three tracks, two center platforms and one side platform; 33rd Street with three tracks, two center platforms and two side platforms.

Since 33rd Street now lies in a subway complex that was built several decades after the opening of the Tubes, its original vaulted arch construction has disappeared; Expand image and then click 5. Tube Stations to return  in Hoboken, on the other hand, this construction is still very obvious.  Also note the picture on the Gallery 2: Stations page.

The Tubes' original 33rd Street station was actually at 33rd Street [and Sixth Avenue] and was constructed after the Sixth Avenue elevated was in place but before any subway was in the area. The BRT/BMT Herald Square station was constructed shortly after the Tubes' station in close proximity. When the Sixth Avenue IND was built [while the Sixth Avenue elevated was still in service], the H&M station had to be shifted southwards away from 33rd Street and sandwiched between the IND Sixth Avenue Line below it and the Broadway BMT above it, the BMT at approximately 20 feet below the surface, the Tubes at approximately 30 feet below the surface, the IND at 40 feet below the surface. This shifting also catches one's eye with the noticeable drop in elevation as you enter the Tubes platform from the BMT/IND concourse. Another view of the "sandwich" situation of this station is on the Gallery 2: Stations page as a schematic. The "new"33rd Street station was opened in 1938

Two underground stations, 28th Street (opened November 10, 1910) and 19th Street, (opened February 25, 1908)  are no longer in operation. In spite of its name 33rd Street station is not located at 33rd Street but between 30th and 32nd Streets. The  construction of the Sixth Avenue subway caused the original 33rd Street station to be relocated further to the south. As a result, the 33rd Street station was now so close to the 28th Street Station that 28th Street was closed around 1938. 

If you're quick of eye, it still is possible to catch a glimpse of 19th Street Station (opened February 25, 1908) which was closed on August 1, 1954; it's easiest, if one looks to the right after leaving 14th Street while heading towards 33rd Street.  Expand image and then click 5. Tube Stations to return     

[Additional photos and comments on the stations are in the Stations Picture Gallery 2 ]

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