Even though we have a few publications, a number of photos and even a plan from 1955 there aren’t that many sources with hard facts about the unique circular freight house built by the Central Railroad of New Jersey in 1907 as part of their Bronx Terminal development. The best sources are the journal “The Railway Age”, Volume 43 No. 19 from May 1, 1907 and the “Railroad Gazette”, Volume 42 No. 12 from March 22, 1907. Additionally, the plan from August 9, 1955 available on the NYS Department of Records website shows a good amount of detail and exact lengths and widths. Measures between different sources do not always exactly correlate but the variances are in the range of rounding errors and have little relevance for an N scale model.
Here’s what we know about the freight house:
- Its outline is based on a outer circle of 165.8′ diameter and an inner circle of 84′.
- The building is not round. Instead, it is based on 28 equal outer and 14 inner circular wall segments. Each segment has the shape of a pentagon with a centerline. The centerlines of two segments intersect at an angle of 360/14 or 25.7 degrees. The centerlines of two adjacent pentagons are twice the outer chord length or about 37′ away.
- Its N-S axis is 194′ long, however, due to a straight extension of 28.2′ in the middle of the two northern and southern semi-circles, making it an oval (but not an ellipsis).
- In addition to the circular wall segments those extensions constitute one additional rectangular segment on both the West and East side. Those segments measure 28.2′ x 41′.
- The difference of 41′ between the outer and inner circle constitutes the depth of the building.
- The freight building has only one story and a shed roof that is inclined towards the courtyard. The outer height of the wall is 23′ and the inner height about 18′ above the first floor. This results in a roof angle of about 7 degrees. The first floor is about 4′ above ground which corresponds to the modern standard of 4′ something for loading docks.
- The entire freight house is divided into three sections of variable size which are separated by a firewall. The two firewalls are clearly visible from the outside as they are about three feet higher than the roof.
- The first segment (starting at around 11 o’clock) is the office building. It has two stories and a gable roof that follows the pentagonal shape outline. It is approximately 30′ high above floor.
- A 27′ wide driveway slices through the building. The beginning of the office building (first segment) marks one side while the opposite side is given by a parallel line approximately 27′ across that cuts through the last two segments, making them incomplete. The driveway leads to the courtyard used by delivery trucks and cars for loading and unloading freight. The loading zone is protected by a continuous canopy with 8′ overhang.
- The inner circular track around the freight house is used by boxcars for loading and unloading of freight. Each segment has a freight door on the outside (in the middle of the right half of the pentagon) for the boxcars and again a freight door of the same size on the inside for the trucks. As stated earlier, the distance between two centerlines is 37′ as is the distance between two adjacent freight doors. That’s exactly what is needed to simultaneously serve a string of 36′ boxcars spotted on the inner circular track!
The available plans and journal articles show a few more details, like size of windows or freight doors (10′ x 10′) and the layout of doors, gates and windows. The information above is sufficient, however, to calculate about 100 primary coordinates in a three-dimensional space that entirely define the envelope of the building. Given its very geometric definition it must be calculated. This has the advantage that once we agree on the primary lengths, widths and heights, the resulting shape will match exactly the prototype.
Photos and even plans also give a good idea on the construction and the material used for the building. The uniqueness of the building is underscored by the materials used. The outside shell of the building is made of corrugated metal with a very small spacing (approximately 2.4″ wide) so that it is hard to see on some of the photos. On many images the building looks almost white or at least in a very light gray. Some closer shots also reveal that there was quite a bit of weathering of the metal. To avoid leakage of water into the metal facade the roof is bordered against the walls with a metal skirting. The construction sits on a concrete base. The dark colored bordering is used in many transition areas where base, shell, doors, windows and roof join. The shape of those borders and their contrast to the bright facade gives the building sometimes the look of a wire frame model drawn on a CAD program. The roof is covered with dark gray slag. Every other segment has a skylight of about 5′ x 6′ length. The building has painted its name “Central RR of New Jersey Freight House” in big capitalized letters on its face next to the entrance, on its south side facing Harlem River and again on the east side facing the team tracks. Finally, a remarkable detail about the surroundings of the building is its courtyard paved with the same granite cobblestone that is also used for the loading areas along the team tracks. This is it, pretty much!