At its eastern end, the street provides a view of the Lincoln Tunnel Helix and, directly across the North River, of the Empire State Building and New York Skyline.

A few years later in 1907, 125 men working in the North River Tunnels were forced to evacuate through the Shippen Street opening when tar paper used for waterproofing caught fire.

Eleven men were unaccounted for upon the initial count; they were found 500 feet from the shaft at Shippen alive but unconscious, and had apparently survived by inhaling oxygen through a compressed air pipe which they hacked through.

[10] With Hackensack Plank Road already in decades worth of usage and regularity and Shippen Street residential properties extending to the edge of the cliff side, transportation planners and engineers were left little option to connect the two street other than creating a hairpin style turn portion, whereas a perpendicular intersection between the two roads would have created too great of a slope gradient for pedestrians, carriages or automobiles to traverse safely.

[citation needed] At the north side is a staircase connecting the upper and lower ends of the hairpins, which allows pedestrians to avoid the walk where there are no sidewalks.

The buildings overlooking the Horseshoe, as it has always been known by the locals, was the factory of S. Blickman & Co. which operated a stainless steel fabricating plant at the site for about 70 years.

Delivering truck size rolls of stainless steel and carrying away the often huge finished products fit for outfitting large ships.

In the past, the steps provided townspeople with access to Weehawken's original town hall, as well as the old police station, which was headquarter in the building at 309 Park Avenue.

from the Hudson Bergen Light Rail Lincoln Harbor Station and New York Waterway ferries, though pedestrian access requires a detour around the tunnel's toll plaza.