Title

The Largest Passenger Elevators in the World

Description

Article from The Manufacturer and Builder, November 1891. The Largest Passenger Elevators in the World. The largest elevators, for carrying passengers, in the world, have just been completed on the banks of the Hudson, near Weehawken. The high table- land in New Jersey, opposite New York city, amid between the Hudson River and the Hackensack, has, up to to this time, not been used as generally for purposes of pleasure and residence as it should have been. This elevated plain, known as the Palisades, is at its beginning some one hundred and fifty feet above high tide, and is over a mile wide at the same point. It stretches north for many miles up the Hudson River, and naturally rises in elevatlon as it proceeds. This high land has been accessible only by steep grades for wagon roads, and by means of stairways which climbed laboriously up the steep cliff. The Hudson County Railway Company, which operates the elevated road at Hoboken, and controls many of the street-car lines in that neighborhood, has of late years been extending these lines and increasing the facilities for getting on top of the Palisades, and from one point of this high plateau to another. The most recent addition to the plant of this company has been the building of huge elevators at Weehawken, where the ferryboats from Forty-second and Jay streets, New York city, discharge their passengers, and where, also, the West Shore Railway starts north and west to Albany and Buffalo. These elevators are the largest ever constructed for passengers, and in planning them the engineers have adopted new devices to secure their safety against accidents. From the elevators, which rise just from the water's edge, there is an immense viaduct, or elevated railroad, which runs some eight hundred feet back to the hill, where connections will be made with the various steam and horse cars which will run in one direction and another. Harper's Weekly.

Subject

WHC88183

Date

1891

Type

OT

Identifier

WHC88183

Coverage

Weehawken, NJ [40.7663711,-74.02537149999999]

Tag

Railroad

Transportation

Waterfront

Rights

This digital image may be used for educational or scholarly purposes without restriction. Commercial and other uses of the item are prohibited without prior written permission from the Weehawken Historical Commission.