hudson river

October 16, 2012

Tuesday Tour of the Hudson Line: Hastings-on-Hudson

Various artifacts from Hastings-on-Hudson station, including New York Central and Penn Central tickets. The Monthly Commutation ticket is from the collection of the Hastings Historical Society, and belonged to a young woman named Josephine Selvaggio. Nestled in between the stations of Greystone and Dobbs Ferry, and just over 19 miles from Grand Central, lies the station of Hastings-on-Hudson. The railroad has been a main feature of Hastings since the 1840’s, and along with it came various factories and industry. In 1840 a sugar refinery was established just south of where the train station is. A fire destroyed the building in...

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October 9, 2012

Tuesday Tour of the Hudson Line: Riverdale

Welcome to Riverdale, the site of today’s Tuesday Tour, and a lovely example of a Hudson Line station. Though Riverdale is in the Bronx, the area around the station looks more like the suburbs than the city. Beautiful views of the Hudson River and the Palisades surround you here – and not to offend anyone from the Bronx, the view here at Riverdale is probably not what comes to your mind when you think of “the Bronx.” Metro-North’s station at Riverdale is located 13 miles from Grand Central. The facilities consist of an overpass with a few ticket vending machines,...

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October 2, 2012

Tuesday Tour of the Hudson Line: Ossining

Artifacts from Ossining: Postcard, a 1984 ticket stamped at Ossining, and an 1851 Hudson River Railroad timetable that lists the station as “Sing Sing.” Welcome to Ossining – probably one of the most widely known locales on the Hudson Line. Unfortunately, it is one of the most well known for a particular landmark located here: Everybody knows Sing Sing – Late 1800’s stereoview of the railroad tracks running through the prison. Yes, Ossining is the home of Sing Sing prison, or as it is known now, the Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Dating back to the early 1800’s, the prison has...

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September 25, 2012

Tuesday Tour of the Hudson Line: Spuyten Duyvil

View of the railroad tracks near Spuyten Duyvil in 1890. When coming up with superlatives for the Hudson Line, people generally cite it as Metro-North’s most attractive line. I, on the other hand, like to think of it as the most frequently misspelled. It is the Hudson Line that has stations like “Phillip’s Manor” and “Pokipse,” and, of course, the one that takes the cake – “Spitendivel.” Today’s tour takes us to the (correctly spelled) Spuyten Duyvil, a station about 10 miles north of Grand Central Terminal in the Bronx. Considering that it is a station that is frequently misspelled,...

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September 18, 2012

Tuesday Tour of the Hudson Line: Tarrytown

Tarrytown postcard, monthly ticket from 1896, and a Hudson Division timetable from 1967 As we continue our travels along the Hudson Line, our next stop is Tarrytown station, about 25 miles north of Grand Central Terminal. Today’s tour is chock full of photos and information – certainly befitting one of the line’s busiest stations. Tarrytown is second only to Croton-Harmon in terms of ridership on the Hudson Line. It boasts an 1890 station building, which has been recently restored, and one of Arts for Transit’s newest works. Undoubtedly, Tarrytown is one of the more interesting spots on the Hudson Line,...

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August 31, 2012

A Journey from New York to Poughkeepsie – 1907

It seems that everyone today has a GPS navigator in their car. They’re wonderful little devices (in the hands of someone that isn’t an idiot), but they really make you wonder how in the heck anyone got around in the olden days, before GPSes. In fact, even the days before the GPS, where you’d type in your destination in MapQuest and you could print out instructions, seems dreadfully archaic. And even more so, on the road yesterday I saw a woman pulled over to the side consulting a map! Back in 1907, as is quite obvious, there were no GPSes,...