[4][7] The area has long been known as Communipaw, which in the Lenape language means big landing place at the side of a river.

[8] The first stop west of the station was indeed called Communipaw, and was not far from the village that had been established there in 1634 as part of the New Netherland settlement of Pavonia.

The long cobbled road which ends at the terminal (once called Johnston Avenue for a president of CNJ) is named Audrey Zapp Drive, after the environmentalist active in the creation of the park.

Arriving passengers would walk to the railhead concourse and could either pass through its main waiting room, by-pass it on either side, and take stairs to the upper level.

Arriving at the waterfront from the points required overcoming significant natural obstacles including crossing the Hackensack River and Meadows and Hudson Palisades, and in the case of New Jersey Central, traversing the Newark Bay.

[12] In the early 1900s the B&O Railroad requested the CRNJ operate ferries for its luxury Royal Blue service passengers to Whitehall Terminal and this was accomplished for several years until the City of New York purchased the Staten Island Ferry from the B&O's subsidiary, the Staten Island Railway, and ended the service in 1905.

CNJ's long-distance service into Pennsylvania ran to Harrisburg, Scranton, and present-day Jim Thorpe, then known as Mauch Chunk.

The timetable of 27 September 1936 shows 132 weekday departures, including 25 to CNJ's Broad St. Newark station, 25 that ran south from Elizabethport, two to Chrome and the rest to the NY&LB, and 19 Reading and B&O trains that turned southwest at Bound Brook Junction.

Following the Aldene Connection's opening in 1967, the terminal sat unused but maintained and guarded by the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

[18][7] No public transport options exist between the terminal and Hudson Bergen Light Rail's Liberty State Park Station.

[20] On Election Day 2020, an episode of the political program Fox & Friends was filmed in a portable studio placed outside the terminal.