History
The JSTC was originally the site of the Summit Avenue Station of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad. The district was renamed Journal Square in the 1920s.
The center was opened in stages in 1973, 1974, and 1975 during the late phases of the Brutalist architecture movement. It is constructed over the Bergen Hill Cut, an excavated ravine, originally opened in 1834 and later used by the Jersey City Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Freight trains on the Passaic and Harsimus Line occasionally make use of the cut to traverse the Palisades along tracks north of the mass transit system.
The open-spandrel concrete arch bridge carrying Kennedy Boulevard and the station, built in 1926, is a pared-down version of a more ambitious elevated plaza scheme proposed by consulting engineer Abraham Burton Cohen. Passageways were suspended from the arches to connect the railroad station to bus stops on the bridge deck above. The original mid-roadway bus stop islands have since been removed.
The center is sometimes viewed as having contributed to the decline of the district by moving the train-bus interchange, and thus pedestrians, away from other commercial activities around the square
A statue of Jackie Robinson at the center was dedicated in 1998.
Read more about this topic: Journal Square Transportation Center
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