the Shay Drive switcher was built in 1923 by Lima Locomotive Works for use on the West Side freight line in New York City, chiefly on street trackage on 10th and 11th Avenues, an old city ordinance required them to be covered to avoid frightening horses
It just takes too much time to erase watermarks, and I want to post more today, instead of photoshopping away a watermark, as not only is this a cool train freight terminal photo, this place has some crazy history, and a deplorable present day result.
the elevated rail line became that park that I've posted about, unique as any railroad in Manhattan can be https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2012/03/high-line-wild-wild-west-side-cowboys.html
When New York was a city of moderate size on the lower end of Manhattan Island a goods station was built at St. John's Park, which was then on the outskirts of the city, by the old Hudson River Railroad, now a part of the New York Central.
The name of St. John's Park, unusual for a goods station in the United States, was due to the fact that the station was on the site of a plantation owned by an early settler to New Amsterdam
A 62-acre farmstead granted to Dutch immigrant Roeloff Jansen in 1636 by New Amsterdam governor Wouter van Twiller.
Jansen died just a year later, and left the land to his widow, Anneke Jans. A contemporary manuscript describes the earliest development of the land in 1639, stating the "plantation was new and consisted of recently cleared land, a tobacco house, and was fenced." Jans's claim was renewed when Peter Stuyvesant granted her a patent in 1654.
England recaptured the territory in 1674, and New York governor Edmund Andros claimed the land for the Duke of York, who deeded it to Trinity Church.
I remembered reading about this when working through my family tree:
The church built St. John's Episcopal Church and laid out "Hudson Square", creating New York City's first development of townhouses around a private park in what is now the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.
By 1827 the neighborhood had become known as "St. John's Park" and remained fashionable until about 1851 when Cornelius Vanderbilt laid railroad tracks for the Hudson River Railroad along the west side of the square, St. John's Park owners began to leave in large numbers.
Over the next dozen or so years, the elegant townhouses and mansions around the square and nearby gradually became boarding houses, and the inhabitants of the neighborhood changed from fashionable Knickerbockers to clerks, tradesman and mechanics.
Trinity had maintained the right to sell the land with the consent of two-thirds of the owners of the lots. As New York continued to develop, land in lower Manhattan became increasingly valuable, so in 1866 Trinity sold the park to Vanderbilt for $1 million, split between the church and the lot owners.
In 1867, the New York Times wrote about that time: "When the iron horse began to snort along the streets, and the turmoil of traffic and travel invaded the North River side [of St. John's Park], the "old fogies" became disgusted, and rapidly retreated to more secluded locations."
"The omnivorous appetite of improvement has swept away one more breathing-place in the lower part of the City," but also said: "The transfer to the railroad Company is not to be regretted. As a park it has never been available, save to the few who rented property nearby."
In 1866 it was sold to Cornelius Vanderbilt's Hudson River Railway Company and became the location of St. John's Park Freight Depot, the railroad's southern terminus opened in 1868 on Hudson Street between Laight and Beech Streets..
The terminal was demolished in 1927 to allow construction of exits from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's Holland Tunnel.
As the city grew, the goods station, instead of being on the outskirts, became the heart of the wholesale dry goods and grocery districts. It was also very near the upper limits of the financial district. Each year it saved merchants thousands of pounds in trucking charges.
These city terminals soon proved their value, as they were always available when bad weather impeded, or stopped entirely, the navigation of New York Harbour and the Hudson River by car floats and lighters—the only other means of receiving and sending railway goods. At such times the West Side Line was practically the sole artery along which food and fuel was conveyed to New York's millions.
But the growth was such that developments were required. Planning and negotiations went on at intervals for more than forty years between the company and the city and various interests, until at last it was agreed to abandon the old line and replace it by a new one.
Situated as the line was, the transactions incidental to securing the title to the right of way to the improvement involved about 350 separate deals in nearly sixty blocks, from Spring Street to Sixtieth Street Yard, and the whole formed one of the most extensive property deals ever undertaken by private interests in New York City.
In June, 1934, the new St. John's Freight Terminal was formed and the completion of the scheme came within sight, which altered a number of things.
Railway crossings at 105 streets are eliminated, and the track was removed from several important thoroughfares running north and south, freeing these avenues and streets from the congestion and traffic troubles inevitable when goods trains are running.
The 1867 train depot was razed in 1927, and was used as a truck yard before becoming the eastbound exits of the Holland Tunnel, which carries Interstate 78.
The Holland Tunnel Exit Plaza, located within the city block now owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), consists of a teardrop-shaped roadway.
The roadway provides five exits from the tunnel, which sort traffic down a number of city streets. The inner portion of the plaza, inside the rotary, is still referred to as "St. John's Park" and appears on Google Maps as such, but the property is marked with "No Trespassing" signs and the interior is thus not accessible to pedestrians.
In 2010, the AIA Guide to New York City called the interior space a "circular wasteland" and commented: "Our ancestors preserved many a New York treasure, but blew it here."
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2012/03/high-line-wild-wild-west-side-cowboys.html
http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/275606.aspx
http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r030.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_Park
https://www.facebook.com/neatoldphotos.m.lucas2/posts/1795114863989210
