Pennsylvania Railroad
Harsimus Branch Embankment
Photo © 2000 Leon Yost
The Pennsylvania Railroad Harsimus Branch Embankment, a massive sectional retaining wall that traverses six residential blocks between Fifth and Sixth Streets, is one of the few intact relics of the legendary Pennsylvania Road-arguable the largest, wealthiest, and most influential of several railroad companies that occupied Jersey City's landscape for nearly 150 years. It is now known as the Sixth Street Embankment.
It was designed by James J. Ferris, a prominent civil engineer and politician in Jersey City, for whom Ferris High School is named. He also supervised the pilings and pouring of the vast concrete foundation of the Powerhouse. The Embankment, erected between 1901 and 1905, replaced an older iron and timer embankment deemed too low and unstable.
The Pennsylvania Railroad commissioned Ferris to design the elevated freight line on Sixth Avenue to bring seven railway lines through downtown Jersey City to Harsimus yard on the Hudson River. According to local historian John Gomez, ". . . Ferris made a conscious, successful attempt at integrating the massive structure into the surrounding residential streetscapes with as much elegance and beauty as one can give a stone bridge. The colossal granite and sandstone embankment soared segmentally - block by block, connected by steel bridges - past tenement windows, stables, warehouses, and places of worship. Christened the Pennsylvania Railroad Stem Embankment, it stands as Ferris's engineering masterwork - and it turns out, his only surviving span."
Residents of the quiet historic neighborhoods of Harsimus Cove and Hamilton Park, perfectly separated by the Embankment, had to adjust to this grand structure. Around-the-clock steam locomotives carrying produce and live cattle cargo emerged westerly from the Pennsylvania Railroad Cut, traveled past tenement windows atop the 7-track Embankment, and led directly to the Harsimus Cove freight yards and wharves. Constructed of enormous sandstone and granite blocks, the Embankment reaches a height of 27 feet at its western terminus near Brunswick Street. Each block-long section is 400 feet long and 100 feet wide. Gigantic plate girder bridges connected each segment but were dismantled in 1996 by Conrail and sold for scrap. Recognized as an engineering monument, the Embankment was entered into the State Register of Historic Places in 1999.
In 2005, Conrail sold the Embankment property for $3 million to a developer. The Embankment Preservation Coalition for years has proposed that the property become a linear park and open space for Historic Downtown Jersey City.
Gomez, John. "End of the Line?" Jersey Journal 3 August 2005.
