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From: "Paul Luchter" luckyshow AT mindspring DOT com
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 00:43:10 -0400
Subject: Lincoln at rest on the move at Desbrosses Street and at Hudson River RR Depot
"train.jpg" - image/jpeg, 33892 bytes, 322x180 (256c)

...well, not quite at rest....his funeral train, heading to Springfield,
Illinois, leaves Philadelphia and arrives Jersey City Pennsylvania
Railroad Terminal April 24, 1865.

"After a six-hour trip from Philadelphia, the martyred President's final
journey home to Springfield, Illinois, brought the train on Monday,
April 24, to Jersey City's huge railway station at 10 a.m. But the big
clock inside had been deliberately frozen to read 7:20, the time of Mr.
Lincoln's death April 15 in the District of Columbia. "

From there his coffin was ferried to Desbrosses Street Ferry...see:
http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/gunther/ferryterminal.jpg
Here we see Mayor Gunther accompanying the funeral carriage from
Desbrosses Street Ferry Terminal to City Hall.

Desbrosses Street Pennsylvania Railroad Ferry only began three years
earlier in 1862; it would run to 1930, though I doubt this
classical-style ferry terminal lasted so long.

Desbrosses Street is a bit south of Canal Street. The horsecar we see is
of the Belt Line Railway...this line was never electrified...It had
opened just two years earlier as the Central Park North & East River
Railroad Company, leased in 1892 to Metropolitan Crosstown Railway,
leased 1893 to 1908 to Metropolitan Street railway, reorganized 1912 to
Belt Line Railway when it was acquired by the 3rd Avenue Railway.

It did do a sort of loop, or belt, plying the ferry terminals on the
Hudson side. It was known as the Belt Line RR very early, though, a
loop, or belt from South Ferry up the North River side across 59th, the
east side serving the East River ferries. This route was surveyed by
engineers on loan from the Barge Canal Commission, pre-cursors to the
Port Authority of New York. I guess the rails doubled for freight,
pulled by horses (?) on the river sides at least on the Belt Line
railway...

On April 25th, Lincoln's coffin left the City hall rotunda, on a 14 foot
long funeral car, up Broadway across 14th up 5th Avenue across 34th to
9th Avenue to the Hudson River Railway Depot.

The attachment is picture of the funeral train departing the Hudson
River RR terminal (at 30th between 10th and 9th Avenues)








train.jpg

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