Hudson Terminal

Hudson Terminal was an urban railway station on the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad in Lower Manhattan, New York City and the office skyscraper built to serve the terminal. It operated from 1909 to 1971, and the building was mostly demolished by 1972.

The station was served by two single-track tubes connected by a loop to speed train movements. The loop included five tracks and 3 platforms (2 center island and one side) and was similar to the arrangement of the current World Trade Center PATH station. By 1914, passenger volume at the Hudson Terminal had reached 30,535,500 annually. Volume nearly doubled by 1922, with 59,221,354 passengers that year.

The Beaux-Arts terminal opened with its first train service on July 19, 1909, marking the first use of the Downtown Hudson Tubes, and closed in 1971, when the World Trade Center-Port Authority Trans Hudson railroad station opened. The station was located at 30 Church Street, east of the current PATH terminal. The building was mostly demolished by 1972. Some portions of the track level became part of the PATH station. The last remnant of the station, a cast-iron tube in the slurry wall of the site's foundation, was demolished in 2008.

The Hudson Terminal building was an architectural and engineering marvel of its time. In size, location, function and configuration, it was the predecessor to the World Trade Center.

The terminal included two 22-story buildings located above the station, at 30 and 50 Church Street, between Greenwich, Cortlandt, Church, and Fulton Streets. This combined rail terminal and office block was the first of its kind in any city. The two buildings were identically designed, apart from the southern building's larger footprint and floor plan. Both had rooftop gardens. Dey Street ran between the two (the city wouldn't allow it to be closed), and they were connected by a third-story bridge.

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