Ships-Trains

Hoboken New Jersey

Hoboken Transportation Hub for Ship & Rail

In a book called the Amateur Emigrant, written in 1879, Mark Twain describes his experience traveling from New York City to California.

Describing his arrival in Hoboken, Twain says:

"The landing at Jersey was done in, a stampede. I had a fixed sense of calamity, and to judge by conduct, the same persuasion was common to us all. A panic selfishness, like that produced by fear, presided over the disorder of our landing. People pushed - and elbowed - and ran, their families following how they could. Children fell, and were picked up to be rewarded by a blow. One child, who had lost her parents, screamed steadily and with increasing shrillness, as though verging towards a fit; an official kept her by him, but no one else seemed so much as to remark her distress; and I am ashamed to say that I ran among the rest. I was so weary that I had twice to make a halt and set down my bundles in the hundred yards or so between the pier and the railway station, so that I was quite wet by the time that I got under cover. There was no waiting-room, no refreshment-room; the cars were locked; and for at least another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp upon the draughty, gas-lit platform."

The Hamburg American Line (HAPAG) was by far the largest of the shipping companies bringing immigrants to America.

North German Lloyd was another company ferrying immigrants to America. The ships would berth in Hoboken where emigrants would board barges which would take them to Ellis Island.

An early photo of the docks of the Holland American Line in Hoboken. Emigrants would be loaded on barges at the front of the pier to be taken to Ellis Island.

The waterside of the Lackawanna ferry terminal. Emigrants traveling north and west would board Lackawanna Railroad trains to Buffalo with connections to Chicago and beyond.

A modern photo of the street side of the Lackawanna terminal. Beautifully restored it boast a Tiffany glass ceiling. Most emigrants passing through Hoboken would never see the waiting room. They boarded the train from the emigrant terminal.

Street side of the North German line. Note the gates restrict access.

By 1900, emigrants no longer stood outside as Twain described in 1879. A photo of the Lackawanna emigrant terminal in Hoboken, NJ. Unlike the Beaux Arts main terminal the waiting area for emigrant passengers and other "cheap" seat passengers was no frills.

Lea Halpern, Dutch Jewish sculptress among something over 900 Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany arrived in Hoboken in 1939 on the Holland-American Line ship, Rotterdam.