Exchange Place station (Pennsylvania Railroad)

Jersey City
sketch of vast station building and feryy operation
Pennsylvania Railroad's Jersey City Station, 1893
General information
Coordinates40°42′59″N 74°01′57″W / 40.71648°N 74.03238°W / 40.71648; -74.03238
Operated byPennsylvania Railroad (PRR)
ConnectionsUS Passenger rail transport ferry/water interchange
History
Opened1834 (1834)
Closed1961 (1961)
Former services
Preceding station Pennsylvania Railroad Following station
Terminus Jersey City Ferry Cortlandt Street
Terminus
Manhattan Transfer
Until 1937
toward Chicago
Main Line Terminus
Marion New Brunswick Line
Preceding station Lehigh Valley Railroad Following station
Manhattan Transfer
toward Buffalo
Main Line
Until 1913
Terminus

The Pennsylvania Railroad Station was the intermodal passenger terminal for the Pennsylvania Railroad's (PRR) vast holdings on the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay in Jersey City, New Jersey. By the 1920s the station was called Exchange Place. The rail terminal and its ferry slips were the main New York City station for the railroad until the opening in 1910 of New York Pennsylvania Station, made possible by the construction of the North River Tunnels. It was one of the busiest stations in the world for much of the 19th century.

The terminal was on Paulus Hook, which in 1812 became the landing of the first steam ferry service in the world, and to which rail service began in 1834. Train service to the station ended in November 1961 and demolition of the complex was completed in 1963. Part of the former terminal complex is now the PATH system's Exchange Place Station while the Harborside Financial Center was built upon part of the old site.

The station was one of five passenger railroad terminals on the western shore of the Hudson River during the 19th and 20th centuries, the others being Weehawken, Hoboken, Pavonia, and Communipaw, with Hoboken being the only station still in use.

The PRR referred to the location simply as "Jersey City," and if necessary to distinguish it from other railroads' terminals, as the Pennsylvania station.