Last Vestiges of Hudson Terminal to Disappear

There are still financial shadows on the Freedom Tower. Revised plans for the 9/11 memorial remain a mystery. But something else is hidden from public view, far below street level: work is accelerating in almost every corner of the World Trade Center site.

Two months ago, a dozen workers at most were there every day. The number is now approaching 100, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns and controls the site. By the fifth anniversary of the attack, there will probably be 150. "Since April, we seem to have dramatically picked up the pace," said Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman of the authority, after an inspection tour yesterday. "The early-stage work is among the most complex and difficult. Once it picks up, the momentum moves pretty quickly."

Kenneth J. Ringler Jr., the executive director of the authority, said: "What's being done isn't visible from the street, but it's very necessary in moving this forward quietly. Even the blasting is quiet." (Two blasts on Monday and three on Wednesday to loosen bedrock under the Freedom Tower were scarcely audible outside the site.) A dense subterranean structure of footings, foundations, steel columns and concrete walls must be constructed to support the office towers, the memorial, the permanent PATH terminal, the plaza and the performing arts center.

By the autumn of 2007, the first new aboveground structure at ground zero in four years should be completed, on Vesey Street. This will be a passenger entrance pavilion, or headhouse. It will serve the temporary PATH terminal until the permanent transportation hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava, opens in 2009. On Monday, workers about 45 feet below Vesey Street were torching the hefty structural framework of a truck ramp that served the trade center. Its only recognizable trace was a splayed entry and exit apron that once connected to Barclay Street but now leads to thin air.

Along the west edge of the temporary PATH terminal, 70 feet below street level, a hoe ram — something like a giant jackhammer mounted on tank treads — was chopping up bedrock to prepare for the footings and foundations of a fourth passenger platform. On the other side of the No. 1 subway line, which bisects ground zero, a mobile excavator was grading the earth to prepare for a test of the pilings that will be used to support the subway tracks during the excavation and construction around them. The pilings will be made of tubular steel pipes like those used for drilling oil wells. Each piling is supposed to support 250 tons. But they are being tested with a 25-foot-tall stack of forged iron blocks and steel plates that weighs 400 tons.

Near the test pilings, a temporary storage, staging and training area has been set up in a two-block-long abandoned underground chamber that was once the passenger platform hall of the Hudson Terminal. This was built in 1909 by the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, predecessor to PATH.

The Hudson Terminal was later used for truck loading docks under 4 and 5 World Trade Center. It will eventually be demolished to make way for the new PATH terminal.

Phoenix Constructors, a joint venture of Slattery Skanska, Bovis Lend Lease, Fluor Enterprises and Granite Construction, is building the temporary and permanent PATH terminal. Tishman Construction Corporation is building the Freedom Tower. On Tuesday, Mr. Coscia warned that the tower would have to be reconsidered if state officials failed to obtain leases for one million square feet from federal agencies by September. Yesterday, Frank J. Sciame, a construction executive charged with finding ways to build the memorial and memorial museum for $500 million, made his report in private to Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. The recommendations are to be released next week. Current estimates for the memorial and memorial museum run from $630 million to $672 million, not including the overall costs of preparing the site, estimated at $150 million to $300 million. It seems increasingly clear that in order to meet the $500 million memorial budget, at least one of two key elements in the original design by Michael Arad may have to be eliminated: the waterfalls inside the two voids where the twin towers stood or the underground galleries that were to surround the pools at the bottom of the voids.

A far more certain prospect for construction is PATH's new Vesey Street headhouse, which will replace the concourse and canopy on Church Street that opened in 2003. In the reconfigured terminal, commuters will leave through the north end of the existing mezzanine and a new intermediate platform. "Iridescent Lighting," a 118-foot mosaic mural currently on the mezzanine, will be relocated there.

From the intermediate platform, eight escalators, two stairways and an elevator will rise 42 feet to the headhouse opposite the new park outside 7 World Trade Center. A Hudson News newsstand will occupy one corner of the entrance pavilion. Eventually, that site is to be occupied by a performing arts center designed by Frank Gehry. Officials are trying to coordinate the two projects, so that the underground part of the Vesey Street entrance does not interfere with the arts center foundations.

New York Times

Schematic of the replacement entrance to the temporary terminal

That NY Times article includes a photo slide show.

I have some comments about the NY Times slide show:

Second Photo: This is labeled as an unused train tunnel. This is a train tunnel, of course, from the original H&M Hudson Terminal, but was used as a truck ramp during the WTC years, and was called truck ramp "J".

Third Photo: This is not a beam that supports the H&M tunnel. It's a WTC beam that supported a new truck ramp built to connect to the tunnel.

Fourth Photo: Not a truck ramp. If you ever used the WTC parking facility, this was called "Ramp U". This portion that remains was rebuilt after the attacks when it was uncertain what would be coming back to the site. The ramp is not original but is the same shape and in the same location as the original. The actual ramp from this base up was removed several years ago.

Last (Sixth) Photo: This is not a photo of "the ruins". This was the southern H&M tunnels leading from the original Hudson Terminal. This was known as truck ramp "L". The tunnel was demolished over the past few weeks and this is all that remains (the first photo shows a good view of this).

Thanks for everything in this thread!

Today, The Times has an eight newsprint page report titled "Broken Ground; The Hole in the City's Heart" regarding "the past five years". Anyone who is a regular Times reader knows that "in depth" means one thing within the journalistic community; quite simething else to The Times. Here, as a "brief passage", is the report addressing the status of the Calatrava PATH station:

AN EXPENSIVE VISION

When it came to selecting an architect to build the new PATH station, the Port Authority had no intention of following in the development corporation’s footsteps.

“We did not want an endless public process with 5,000 public submittals,” said Anthony Cracchiolo, who was in charge of capital projects for the authority. “We said, ‘Let’s do it the traditional way.’ ”

Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect, artist and engineer who had earned an international reputation for his bridges and transportation terminals, submitted a bid in partnership with two New York firms.

“You see,” Mr. Calatrava said in an interview, explaining his interest, “to make a statement of construction in a place that has suffered such a devastating destruction — you cannot be in a better place.”

In the summer of 2003, Mr. Calatrava’s partnership, which includes the STV Group and DMJM Harris, won a $155.6 million contract to design the PATH station.

(Several years later, Mr. Cracchiolo, who retired from the Port Authority with a $145,000 annual pension, went to work for STV. So did two other former Port executives involved with the PATH project, although the firm said that none of them are working on that terminal. )

Inspired by the idea of a child releasing a dove, Mr. Calatrava designed a soaring winged structure, with a roof that could open to the sky every Sept. 11.

Port Authority officials quickly found themselves enchanted by Mr. Calatrava’s considerable charm. “I have become very, very fond of Santiago,” said Mr. Ringler, the Port Authority’s executive director. “The guy’s a genius. But the first thing that hits you in the face — he gives you a hug.”

Mr. Calatrava’s business is based in Zurich and Valencia, Spain, but since 2002 he has lived part-time on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Unlike many other architects at ground zero, Mr. Calatrava has retained significant creative control, although he has faced both security issues and some minor cost concerns. He was asked to use polished granite instead of marble, for instance, but Port Authority officials have not wanted to tie the hands of a man they consider an artist.

“Our people call him the Da Vinci of our time,” said Mr. Seymour of the Port Authority.

After Sept. 11, Port Authority officials jumped at the opportunity to remake the antiquated transportation infrastructure of Lower Manhattan. Almost immediately, they decided that they would not only restore what was lost but also improve on it.

“The trade center had been attacked twice,” Mr. Cracchiolo said. “Our thinking at the time was we needed to make a statement. We wanted to create a Grand Central Terminal in Lower Manhattan. It could be a catalyst for development as Grand Central was in Midtown.”

Grand Central, however, was built by the Vanderbilts. The new terminal in Lower Manhattan will be built by the taxpayers.

The central hall in Mr. Calatrava’s station will be roughly as capacious as Grand Central’s main concourse. But while Grand Central has 45 train tracks, the PATH station will have 5. And while Grand Central serves 200,000 train commuters and 700,000 subway riders daily, the World Trade Center PATH station now serves 42,000.

The Port Authority anticipates the number of commuters doubling in a couple of decades, just as it anticipates the transportation hub — with its stores and store-lined underground corridors — evolving into a heavily trafficked crossroads.

New York’s leaders stand solidly behind the PATH project even if some gape at the price tag. “It’s the only part of the project that has not been controversial,” Carl Weisbrod, president of Trinity Real Estate, said. “It’s a lot of money to spend on a PATH station. But the Calatrava may well end up becoming the icon of the site.”

In trips to Washington after Sept. 11, New York officials made transportation projects a priority, persuading Congress to dedicate $4.55 billion of the ground zero money to them. That was a substantial chunk — almost a third — of the $15 billion in direct federal aid. (Another $5 billion came in the form of a tax incentive program.)

The two major transportation projects, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Fulton Street Transit Center and the Port Authority’s World Trade Center transportation hub, are nearly side by side. “It will be like having Grand Central and Penn Station a block apart,” Mr. Yaro of the Regional Plan Association said.

The M.T.A. project is budgeted at $847 million, and the port’s at $2.2 billion, with a $280 million reserve fund. (The Port Authority will contribute $300 million of its own money to the PATH complex.) Neither terminal adds capacity to its system.

As now estimated, the PATH complex — whose price tag includes underground passageways radiating from the terminal and the east foundation — costs roughly the same as the Freedom Tower. But it requires much less concrete and steel, chief ingredients that drive cost, according to construction estimates.

Where the Freedom Tower will need 190,000 cubic yards of concrete and 53,700 tons of steel, according to the estimate, the PATH complex will need less than half as much of those materials.

One reason for the disproportionate cost of the PATH project is that the government is spending more on “soft costs” than Silverstein Properties, which is building the Freedom Tower. For instance, the PATH complex’s administration, design and insurance costs will total about $620 million, or 28 percent of the project’s total, according to federal transportation documents. The same costs for the Freedom Tower will be about $290 million, or 14.5 percent of that project’s total, according to Silverstein Properties.

Port officials say the projects are not comparable. “Ours is a complex transportation project,’’ said John J. McCarthy, the agency’s public affairs director. “It’s very different than a stand-alone office building.’’

The new PATH terminal will replace the $323 million temporary PATH terminal built to replace the one destroyed on Sept. 11. That temporary station, an impressively rapid government construction project that seemed to herald a quick rebirth of the site, opened in the fall of 2003.

Here's"the works"; I believe this reportage is worthy of a Pulitzer.

During the recovery/clean up operation at the World Trade Center and when the PATH was restored to the World Trade Center there was talk of bringing PATH service back to the location of the H&M Terminal along Church street.

That is not happening, in fact they are demolishing that area.

August 2006 - Demolition of Former H & M Structures

DemoHM04

DemoHM03

DemoHM05

DemoHM01

"Don't know if anybody's been in the PATH WTC station lately, but
on the S. end of the station concourse(in the paid area, so you'll
have to pay a PATH fare to see it), there are some old photos of H&M
train cars, as well as a picture in the Hudson Terminal concourse.

One thing that struck me was the signage in the terminal concourse to
direct passengers to subway connections...I had to see a "TO 7TH AVENUE
SUBWAY" sign to know that I wasn't looking at an old photo of a
Philadelphia subway concourse. I know that the H&M had some PRR help
in getting going, and did have joint running W. of Journal Square. It
did surprise me to see Philadelphia-style lettering in a NYC setting,
so did PRR advise H&M in other matters as well? Just curious...

Later Michael T. Greene"

Where did you quote this from? Referring source is necessary.

Post subject: from the Yahoo Big Apple traction group:

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/BigAppleTraction/

have a question about the old h&m tunnels. when were they last used and how far did they go beyond the pics that are shown?

One thing the pictures showed was how massive and well built the concrete work was. I bet there ain't stuff being built to them specs today!!

Vdub, HudsonCity gives the date of changeover from here to the WTC as July 6, 1971. I think those picts are looking northwest at the tunnel turns that show at the end of the phrase “Cortlandt Street” on the PDF page 55/fig.3 map in this 3meg file.

Bill

The first two are looking northeast, the third is looking northwest, and the last is looking west.

The tunnels didn't go much beyond what you can see in the pictures, you can pretty much see all the way into the H&M station if you look through the southernmost tube. Looking west, the iron ring tunnel section starts just beyond the portal that is there now and continues until it penetrates the slurry wall.

And yes, Bill West is correct, those turns are what you are seeing in the pictures.