The Flickr Vintagejerseycity Image Generatr

When I shot this image, this place was a giant field of abandoned railroad land. The soil was contaminated with diesel fuel, PCBs and lord knows what else. As an adventurous 16-year-old, I enjoyed exploring this place and all the crumbling, disused old railroad infrastructure. In the distance center, the abandoned Central Railroad of New Jersey and its rusting train shed is visible. I can still recall the oily muck which passed for soil where the tracks once existed. A heavy scent of diesel fuel, rust and utter abandonment hung in the air.

This was the first time I discovered this abandoned and forlorn place. The air reeked of rust, old plaster and the rancid, stagnant smell of the Hudson River which was polluted back then.

Getting here required walking all the way down on the cobblestones of what was then called Johnston Ave, surrounded by tall reeds, piles of trash and railroad ruins on both sides.

As a 15-year-old, I was both scared and yet excited. Naturally, my Kodak Pocket Instamatic 40 caught a number of these scenes of abandonment.

Today, this is a part of Liberty State Park and has been all cleaned up and gentrified.

I recently saw this large mural hanging on the wall at a restaurant and had to take a shot of it. It's amazing what a difference almost 100 years has made in both NYC and Jersey City.

If your browser supports Flickr Notes, I've added several of them to explain what used to exist here.

Before gentrification of Jersey City was even a thought, this was the view from what is is now J. Owen Grundy park at Exchange Place.

For decades, there stood a motley array of obsolete, forgotten and decrepit piers left over from prior generations.

A girlfriend I met in Rutgers snapped this scene in the early version of Liberty State Park using my Kodak Pocket Instamatic loaded up with Kodacolor 110 film.

I've added a number of Flickr Notes to this picture. If your browser supports them, please take a look.

What a different view from today. Back then, Jersey City was in a post-industrial state with trash and garbage to be found just about everywhere. This photo looks to the Morris Canal with the Statue of Liberty in the distance and an abandoned crane by the banks of the Canal.

Today, a number of tall townhouses and fancy apartment building stand where this area of abandonment used to exist. The new buildings have a great view of Liberty State Park, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island from their upper floors.

The old photos which show the original Twin Towers really bring memories for me. I'm glad I took these photos while it was still standing.

This sunset shot from New York harbor was taken with my favorite 110 film camera - the Pentax Auto 110. Although so tiny that you could hold it in the palm of your hand, it took photographs that were almost as good as 35mm.

The Pentax Auto 110 were sold in the early 1980s though the 1990s. It's a shame they didn't last. Today, Lomography makes a range of color and black and white 110 film, so dust off your old Pentax and take some really good pictures on tiny 16mm negatives!

Taken on one of my teenage urban adventures exploring the massive abandoned and forlorn Jersey City waterfront railroad yards. I've uploaded a number of photos from that particular day, but held out on this one because the focus isn't crystal clear.

Whenever I'm in Liberty State Park these days, I just can't forget how forlorn and deserted this place used to be.

A friend sent me a very low resolution copy of this image and asked if I could upload it to Flickr. After a lot of playing with Photoshop, this is the net result. I didn't shoot the photo, but sure wish I had!

After the Central Railroad of New Jersey stopped service in 1967 and before the very beginning of Liberty State Park in the early 1980s, this was an amazing horizon to horizon no-man's land of utter abandonment. Jersey City. November 1976.

Today, the "Grove of Remembrance" is right here. It's a large area of fenced-off woods which have grown back since this place was transformed into Liberty State Park in the early 1980s.

I've read that the soil there was so contaminated by the presence of the Central Railroad of New Jersey as well an endless amount of illegal chemical dumping, that it was just easier to fence it off and let nature have at it.

Trees had already begun to grown on the embankment. These days, it has evolved into an urban forest.

To see the exact same view as it appears now on Google Street View, the link is below. The difference between 1977 and today are amazing!

www.google.com/maps/@40.7251361,-74.0411004,3a,75y,130.68...<

I had just discovered Jersey City a few months earlier with all its post-industrial and railroad ruins. Looking out the window from my Dad's office on the 58th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower, an entire coastline of abandonment was visible.

A 35 cent PATH train ride from the ultra modern WTC station to the the shabby 1908 equivalent in Exchange Place brought me to exactly where I needed to be for a closer look and lots of photography.

Absolute silence except for the sound of crickets and the occasional tug boat on the Hudson.

Yes, the Jersey City shoreline once looked like this. At this point, most of it consisted of dozens of decrepit piers and massive abandoned railroad yards which once belonged to the Central Railroad of New Jersey. This photo shows the same location where the Liberty State Park walkway by New York Harbor exists today.

This forgotten slice of daily life is actually a small part of the two larger photos below showing the intersection of Jersey Avenue and 12th Street. It's the same car parked in all three images.

==> If your browser supports Flickr Notes, I've added several of them to this view.

A small slice of street life from that moment in time. It's a portion of the much larger photograph shown below...

==> If your browser supports Flickr Notes, I've added a lot of them to this view.

There’s an amazing amount of empty lots to the right of 12th street, many of which hold various billboards vying for the attention of the occupants of passing 1920 cars.

Although I don’t know, it’s possible these lots were empty because they were owned by the Erie Railroad, which wanted to hold on to the property for future expansion.

Also, notice that the 10th street Erie Railroad Embankment on the right appears to be made of dirt rather than the large masonry blocks shown in later photographs. It’s possible that in this era, the masonry blocks were covered with soil or compacted dirt. If you know the history of this embankment, please leave a comment.

At the corner of Jersey Avenue, you can see M.T. Watt’s Standard Gasoline filling station with two cars filling up.
Housewives hang wash to dry between tenement apartment buildings.

The Emerson Radio factory is at center left … and of course, the Union Terminal Cold Storage building in the center of the view.

The brand new Holland Tunnel ventilation towers are visible at the end of 12th Street.

The Hoboken Lackawanna railroad yards are in the left distance by the Hudson River.

Here's a look at the same intersection of Jersey Avenue and 12th Street as it appears today...
www.google.com/maps/@40.7305247,-74.0447985,3a,75y,97.51h...