Jersey City Waterfront & Downtown
Exchange Place: Jersey City Learns to Go Under the Hudson
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
For generations, the Hudson forced passengers to transfer to a ferry.
Then engineers put trains underneath it.
The Hudson and Manhattan Railroad opened tunnel service between New Jersey and Manhattan in the early twentieth century.
Exchange Place became one of the major stations in that network.
The tubes fundamentally changed the commute.
Passengers could remain on rail transit rather than disembark for a ferry crossing.
What we now call PATH grew out of that system.
The tunnels did not make ferries instantly irrelevant.
Transportation transitions overlap.
But they changed the economics of waterfront terminals and commuter habits.
Jersey City became more tightly connected to Manhattan while remaining politically and physically separate.
That pattern is familiar today.
People can work in New York, live in New Jersey and experience the river mostly as a few dark minutes underground.
Exchange Place also became one of the focal points of waterfront redevelopment.
Office towers rose around direct transit.
Later residential construction followed.
The same infrastructure that once served railroad workers and industrial commuters became one of the reasons the waterfront could support high-value finance and professional employment.
This is the core Jersey City story in miniature.
Transportation does not merely respond to development.
It creates development opportunities.
A ferry terminal changes land values.
A rail tunnel changes them again.
A PATH station changes them again when the economy shifts.
When you stand here and see Manhattan apparently within touching distance, remember that the river is both a barrier and an asset.
Jersey City's history comes from repeatedly finding better ways to turn that barrier into movement.