What might the Port of New York look like today if there had been no container revolution?




air terminal promenade.jpg








Brooklyn Grain Terminal








Street side Chelsea Piers





Chelsea Piers




Proposed Freight Piers for Hoboken 1948

In these drawings note how trucks would be accomodated on two levels and freight cars on the first.  Forklifts brought pallets from the dock, into the warehouse and load them directly on freight cars.

One of the major limitations of the older piers was that there was insufficient room to turn or back up trucks.  Wider piers with dedicated ramps for truck traffic would  eliminate this problem.


Proposed Freight piers for Hoboken





Holland Tunnel 1948








Inland Terminal Street view





Inland Terminal From the Air



A particularly interesting idea was to consolidate all of the railroad car float operations into Manhattan into one terminal building:



Union Car Float Terminal





Union truck terminals
1948 Air terminal buildings


Hoboken Shore Railroad

This map of Hoboken shows route of the Hoboken Shore Railroad.






Map of Jersey City


At the time this map was published in 1977 it was already out of date.  Note that the Lehigh Valley ran along the Morris Canal Basin.  The Jersey Central Terminal is shown as it appeared before the construction of Liberty State Park.






Perth Amboy waterfront


The New York & Long Branch, Lehigh Valley, and Pennsylvania Railroad all ran to Perth Amboy.