u/Colors_678

1973 Annual Report

The PDF

What’s called Harborside today was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Harborside Terminal. It was a massive waterfront freight warehouse as brochure states.

The Erie once stored refrigerator cars ln here. Nearly a century later, it’s still a yard full of cars… Just not railroad cars anymore 😂.

The original photograph was taken from a bridge that no longer exists, so the modern view is from roughly the same location rather than an exact match.

The July 9, 1968 Jersey Journal shows steel for the World Trade Center being stored in the Penn Central yard in Jersey City before heading across the Hudson to Lower Manhattan. At the same time steel for the lower level of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge was also being staged here before being shipped to Bush Terminal.

This was the solution they came up with in the 1950s to fix what was known as the "Death Highway".

57 years ago today, the Verrazzano’s lower level opened. Pictured in the second photo steel sections staged in Jersey City beside the World Trade Center awaiting shipment to Bush Terminals. (Link)

It’s wild to see how local planners actively championed turning farmland in Central Jersey into a massive industrial/commercial highway corridor. Pitching it as a way to "ease traffic snarls" and bring convenience and “Menlo park” to your driveway... 

The “Miracle Mile” was the name given to Edison’s industrial corridor along Route 27 extending from the area around today’s Amazon warehouses near Route 287 to Plainfield Avenue. Newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s frequently used the term to describe what they viewed as the future of economic development. A corridor filled with major manufacturers and warehouses that fueled job growth and expanded the township’s tax base. The Miracle Mile became a symbol of Edison’s prosperity and was often held up as a model for modern industrial development.

Two things I didn’t mention were the proposed Route 95 (Somerset Freeway) and some of the bizarre Rt. 287 interchanges and traffic movements that highway planners were trying to eliminate. If this post gets any interest I’ll make those posts in the future. 

 

 

This series was published by the Plainfield Courier News in 1957.

These signs were located along the Newark Bay Extension of the New Jersey Turnpike and similar signs also appearing farther south on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Extension. Most of these signs have been removed, only the first two signs remain.

The New Jersey Turnpike was constructed during the 1950s and 1960s and much of its infrastructure reflected the Mid-Century Modern designs that were popular at the time.

The ramp was removed in the 1980s.

Edit: To clarify the entrance was located here on Washington Ave immediately before the exit to Route 9 South.