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I don’t remember if I posted this in the past, but here’s a neat video of Public Service trolleys in Hudson County and Essex Counties.
There’s views of Hoboken, Weehawken, and the Newark and Essex Divisions. Interesting stuff!
An Oakland (Street? Avenue?) car about to leave Palesades Avenue and climb the incline to the Elevated to run north and then east to the Hoboken Terminal. The operator was either lazy or forgetful regarding the rear destination sign, which is incorrect. The car on the Elevated is a Jackson car from the Hoboken Terminal (called Hudson Place by PSNJ) headed to Summit via Journal Square, Jersey City.
Could this be it?
https://dspace.njstatelib.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10929/24664/Wagon.jpg?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Or maybe this?
https://www.hrmm.org/history-blog/historic-news-getting-on-top-of-the-palisades-elevators-in-1891
That’s all I can find so far.
Note the reference to the construction of the Ninth Avenue ‘suicide curve’ to 8th Avenue at 110th. I believe this was that fascinating Phoenix Bridge rapid-construction method that was really the last extreme lightweight material-saving approach in the rapid-transit building boom in New York at the end of the 19th Century…
Interesting parallel between the wagon elevator in Weehawken and the one in Jersey City adjacent to the viaduct we discussed earlier.
I was astounded to find how much of it survived to five years ago!
If you were wondering about the somewhat cryptic reference to racetracks and amusement parks, consider where the car line from that Eldorado Elevator ran. (Why this was big news in Lewiston, I’m not quite sure, but I’m glad it was!)
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9M4gAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u2oFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5705,469078&hl=en
For many years the Castle at Nungesser’s was the only real place you could get those little square hamburgers; it is still the only place I saw demonstrated the old time and motion study that was done to exploit the ‘design features’ that made White Castle cutting-edge in fast food without recourse to hotlights.
Mike needs to research the Eldorado next. It appears there was a hotel first, likely incorporated into the amusement park… and a housing development afterward…
http://www.hiddennj.com/2012/03/lost-city-of-gold-in-weehawken-eldorado.html?m=1
The mention of the El Dorado amusement park triggered a memory.
There was another Weehawken oddity I saw mentioned in “Weird New Jersey” magazine several years ago called the Grauert Causeway, a monster of a staircase that rose from the Hudson River up to where the El Dorado used to be.
The “WNJ” article’s not available for download (Too bad, it was classic!) but I did find this:
Story of the Grauert Causeway and its replacement (to Port Imperial) here, with cites for a magazine story:
https://archive.hudsonreporter.com/2010/04/29/dont-try-this-at-home-2/
Note the reference to Pershing Blvd, once an integral part of the ‘good roads’ Lincoln Highway (up to the opening of the Holland Tunnel and Pulaski Skyway in 1927). It appears that Public Service ran multiple lines to the Weehawken Terminal on this road: lines 19 Union City; 21 West New York; 23 Palisade; and 25 Weehawken. I’m not particularly a trolley guy but this should open the floodgates for Mr. Klepper and other ‘usual suspects’…
Better I love the rivers side,
Where Hudson’s sounding waters glide
And with their full majestic tide,
To the great sea keep flowing;
WEEHAWK, I love thy frowning height
Since first I saw with found delight,
The wave beneath thee rushing bright
And the new Rome still growing.
Right, I found that Hudson Reporter article during my search for any kind of pictures of the Grauert Causeway.
Should you care to, the WNJ magazine with the Grauert Causeway article is still available as a back order.
https://weirdnj.com/ Click on “Store” and then “Back Issues,” the one you want is Issue #34.
Lady Firestorm and I love WNJ magazine! Local legends of haunted houses, abandoned insane asylums, “Midget albino cannibals that live under the George Washington Bridge,” real high-school stuff! It’s a riot!
There were apparently more dramatic steps in Weehawken:
“Weird New Jersey” had an article about them too, calling it “The 100 Steps of Doom!”
There were two deaths on those stairs around the turn of the 20th Century, one was a man who shot himself and rolled all the way down, and a poor woman who (I think) slipped and fell down as well.
Mike strikes again!
Hw found the whole “Weehawk” poem, and here it is:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t5v69n73v&view=1up&seq=79
I don’t know how he does it. I’m glad he’s one of the good guys!
Overmod: The Weehawken line of PSNJ did not need an elevator, hero8ic or otherwise, to connect to the NYCentral/West Shore (NYO&W a tenant) Weehawken Terminal. The line ramped down to the terminal with a loop in a paved area just south of and nrxt to the terminal. The operation was somewhat like a mineature version of the Denver & Salt Lake RR’s “Giants Ladder” before opening of the Moffat Tunnel, but with very sharp-radius curves instead of switchbacks. There may have also been an elevator, but was not needed to connect between the streetcar and the trains or between the streetcar and the ferry boats,
Regarding the Ninth Avenue Elevated at 110th Street, Columbus to Central Park West - 8th Avenue:
From the pictures, there was no 110th Street Station during steam-operaton years. I rode the line a nomber of times with my parents, up to the end-of-service, June 1940, age 8. I recall using the 110th Street local station twice. The station was located on straight track on 110th Street between the two avenues and was accessed by an elevator in a building on the north side of 110th Street, I think connected to a mezzanine ubder the three tracks and two side platforms, with stairways betwwen the mezzanine and the platforms.
Deleted as redundant
In 1892 there was apparently a woman who slipped at the top of one of the stairs, I think the one with 20 flights of 20 steps, and rolled all the way to the bottom.
She revived in a few minutes, declined assistance, and went home.
I have the original of the WEEHAWK! poem too. But I didn’t post it all…[A]
The person who quoted it did so in a now-rare typescript from 1932, the original perhaps surviving only in the poor photocopy from which I got the poor image of the Eldorado.
http://files.usgwarchives.net/nj/hudson/history/local/weehawken.txt
How many books would repeat that ‘pome’ in its entirety? [:-^]
Great poem. Thanks
Regarding the woman who slipped, for the large-scale parallel, for a good local evaluation of the widely reported Meron tragedy, go to:
Upon my 80th Birthday, nine years ago, I decided I would no longer have an automobile drivers liscense, and would no longer be the audience or general participant in a large rally or protest or religious event, even rarely visiting the Western Wall and then only with class group from my Yeshiva. Even before that, a description of the Maron event, with packing of people in spaces really too small, had me turn down all invitations to accompany others to that event. Our Yeshiva had its own mini-celebration with lecture, entirely sufficient for me. At 89, I don’t move around much any more in any case.
Still working on repair of this photo, but I;ve prgressed enough to give an idea of the Hoboken Elevagted’s Terminal, just north and connected by pedestrian walkways to the DL&W Terminal.
Hoboken - Summit car aboout to enter Journal Square Station, Jersey City
Wow, those things were battleships, weren’t they?