Architectural Significance of the Clock Tower

Architectural Significance of the Clock Tower. . , The most prominent architectural feature of the Hoboken Lackawanna Terminal, especially when approached from a distance on land or by water, was its tall clock tower. This element stood out from the horizontal massing of the train and ferry terminal buildings. Ecole des Beaux-Arts trained architect Kenneth Mackenzie Murchison designed the complex in the popular Beaux Arts style. The additive fashion in which the design was conceived, however, with each component , the Ferry Slips, the Ferry Concourse, the Main Waiting Room, the Restaurant, and of course, the tower , articulated by a unique volume and roofline, created an overall composition more typical of nineteenth century English Victorian architecture than of the French Beaux Arts idiom. The tower itself was designed as an English Victorian conceit, representing a departure from the Beaux Arts by turning instead to an expression made popular in seaside architecture of the late 19th century., The tall slender tower included a four-faced clock, with each face set in a rectangular opening flanked by brackets and surmounted by a pediment, above which the tower's steep hipped roof rose to a pinnacle. Th tower, like the main terminal buildings, was clad entirely in copper. The details and character of the copper cladding were carefully studied so as to create ornament true to the physical characteristics of the material , it was not designed to imitate stone, rather to give a "metallic feeling" to the design. Murchison designed the copper to conform to classical elements and motifs, but specifically designed the ornament with a hard-edged, linear character that expressed the metallic rather than the ductile quality of the material. Historic photographs indicate that the copper was artificially patinated with a variable verdigris finish to accentuate certain elements., Murchison's inclusion of this clock tower in his design for the Lackawanna Terminal represents a sophisticated mergence of three trends in architecture and planning in the early years of the 20th century: the monumental grandeur of the Beaux Arts classical tradition, which engendered the City Beautiful movement; the persistent, but waning influence of English High Victorian architecture, and in America, new amusement park developments such as those at Coney Island. The over-scale signs and prolific use of electric illumination on the tower all suggest the aesthetic of the waterfront amusement parks, such as Luna Park and Dreamland on Coney Island, which opened and were heralded in the popular and architectural press in 1903 and 1904 during the time Murchison was designing the terminal. Such examples were no doubt part of his inspiration for evoking a sense of pleasure pavilion at the water's edge in his design for the terminal.