Hudson Terminal was a rapid transit station and office-tower complex in the Radio Row neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

Opened during 1908 and 1909, it was composed of a terminal station for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H&M), as well as two 22-story office skyscrapers and three basement stories.

While the buildings were demolished in 1972, the last remnants of the station were removed in the 2000s as part of the development of the new World Trade Center following the September 11 attacks in 2001.

[1][2] Following the announcement of the Downtown Tubes, the rate of real estate purchases increased around Hudson Terminal's future location.

[4][5] The system connected Hoboken, Pavonia, and Exchange Place, three of the five major railroad terminals on the western shore of the Hudson River waterfront.

[15][16] The New York Times predicted that the development of Hudson Terminal would result in the relocation of many manufacturing plants from New Jersey to Lower Manhattan.

[20][21] According to architectural writers Sarah Landau and Carl W. Condit, the cofferdam was five times larger than any such structure previously constructed.

[20] At the time, there was a lot of office space being developed in Lower Manhattan, even as the area saw a decrease in real-estate transactions.

[37][39] U.S. Steel, the post office, and six railroad companies occupied 309,000 square feet (28,700 m2), or over a third of the total space in the buildings.

[20][38] With the exception of a brief period between 1922 and 1923,[40] the terminal's post office operated until the United States Postal Annex at 90 Church Street opened two blocks north in 1937.

[45] The Port Authority had initially proposed constructing the complex on the East River, on the opposite side of Lower Manhattan from Hudson Terminal.

[45] In late 1961, Port Authority executive director Austin J. Tobin proposed shifting the project to Hudson Terminal and taking over the H&M in exchange for New Jersey's agreement.

[60] The last remnant of the Hudson Terminal station was a cast-iron tube embedded in the original World Trade Center's foundation near Church Street.

[68] The station had been built with five tracks because, at the time of its construction, there were plans to build another pair of tunnels under the Hudson River near the Downtown Tubes.

The westernmost side platform, serving Track 5, was used for handling baggage, delivering coal, and depositing ashes from the buildings' power station.

[68][71] The station was designed to accommodate a full trainload of 800 passengers every 90 seconds, the maximum capacity of the Downtown Tubes.

[16][72] The engineers studied pedestrian traffic at the Brooklyn Bridge and other congested areas to determine the design of the station's ramps and staircases.

[9] Other stations on loops—including the City Hall and South Ferry stations of the New York City Subway, built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT)—contained curved platforms, whose gaps between platform and train posed a great liability to passenger safety.

[77][80] The sections of the tubes east of Greenwich Street were subsequently turned into loading docks serving 4 and 5 World Trade Center.

[26] The connection to the Sixth Avenue Line station, opened in September 1908, was via an elevated passageway from the third floor of the Cortlandt Building.

[14][83] The buildings were designed by architect James Hollis Wells, of the firm Clinton and Russell, and built by construction contractor George A.

Some of the city's early-20th-century skyscrapers were thus designed with towers, campaniles, or domes above a bulky base, while others were divided into two structures, as at Hudson Terminal.

[24][89] Small projecting "towers" with pitched roofs rose from the Church Street side of both buildings, rising to 304 feet (93 m).

[20][89] The designs for the buildings' facades called for Indiana limestone cladding below the fifth-floor cornice, and brick and terracotta above.

[24] As built, the lowest four stories of each building were made of polished granite and limestone; each ground level bay was filled with glass.

Also included in the buildings were many miles of plumbing, steam piping, wood base, picture molding, conduits, and electrical wiring.

To provide space for potential north–south subway lines in Lower Manhattan, the roof of any "tunnel railroad" in the area had to be at least 20 feet (6.1 m) below any north–south street.

[96][99] At the end of each ramp or staircase, Karl Bitter designed a large clock face, and there was also a steel and glass marquee protruding onto the sidewalk.

[65][87] The foundation used irregular framing because of the presence of the tracks on the second basement level, and the cofferdam was said to be five times larger than any other similar structure previously constructed.

Heavy sets of three distributing girders, encased in concrete, were used in these locations to support the weight of the Fulton and Cortlandt Buildings.