This arched door graced the Transportation Building at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The building was designed by Louis Sullivan, who also designed one of the world’s first skyscrapers, the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Missouri in 1891.
A little over a decade later the Erie Railroad began blasting away at the trap rock of Bergen Hill in New Jersey, giving us the Erie Cut, which is known as the Bergen Arches for the structures that carry traffic over the cut, which bisected the city, dividing the Heights neighborhood from the rest of the city.
We’re standing under the Palisades Avenue bridge, the eastern portal to the Bergen Arches, and looking up and out toward the East. Where’s the city?
The Cut was completed in 1910 and trains went through it for roughly the next 50 years. But that time Jersey City’s days as a port city had ended and rail transport to the bank of the Hudson River was no longer necessary. The Arches were abandoned and closed off.
My 3QD article tells more or less the rest of that story, with a look toward the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment