# Hawthorne station (New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad)

Hawthorne is a former New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway station located in Hawthorne in Passaic County, New Jersey. The station served as the Susquehanna's passenger ticket office until the end of passenger service on June 30, 1966, and was also used as a freight depot. While the Susquehanna retains ownership, the Volunteer Railroaders Association (VRA), a non-profit railroad preservation group, leases the station for their activities.

## Architecture

The station house is a rectangular at-grade single-story wooden structure in the Carpenter Gothic style featuring a Dutch gable roof with gingerbread trim at the ridgeline, with the sides clad in shiplap reaching down to wainscoting (both separated with molding), down to a brick-faced foundation. There are two large double-hung windows streetside flanking the door, one on the short east end of the building, and one trackside. There is also a bay window trackside for the ticket office featuring double-hung elements itself. Two doors provide access, one trackside and one streetside; both feature transom windows. There are also mock freight doors on each side of the western end of the building, a vestige of former actual freight depot use. All windows and doors feature small pediments.

## History

The location is exceptional in the history of the Susquehanna railroad as its predecessor, the New Jersey Western Railroad, began building from a nearby junction with the Erie Railroad. The NJW built west to Bloomingdale, and east to Paterson beginning in 1869 with DeWitt Clinton Littlejohn envisioning the New Jersey railroad as the final eastern link to New York City in his New York and Oswego Midland Railroad. In 1870, the New Jersey Western was consolidated into the New Jersey Midland Railway. That railroad would stretch to Newfoundland and Hackensack by March 1872, and eventually to Middletown to link with the NYOM in the west, and east to Jersey City to link with the Pennsylvania Railroad at Marion. The first trains from Oswego to Jersey City began to run along the combined Midland route in 1873. By 1881 the railroad had become the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad and turned toward hauling coal from the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania.
The station was completed in 1894 to replace the original station railroad-east, nearer the junction with the Erie Railroad. From then until 2010 the station stood on the corner of Royal Avenue and County Route 654 (Diamond Bridge Avenue).
As early as 2005 the VRA began planning a physical move of the station to alleviate the nearly monthly truck strikes to the southeast roof corner. The group fundraised and by July 2010 was constructing a new concrete block foundation with a poured concrete floor, seventy-five feet west of the building's then-current location.
On September 17, 2010, the station's move onto the new foundation was completed by a contractor. Restoration then began, including replacement of deteriorated wooden siding and a full repaint. Also added were a deck with safety railing, a fence between the station and the railroad right-of-way, and a garden patio area in the location of the old station footprint. The damaged roof was also repaired.
In the 2010s it was proposed that New Jersey Transit build a new station for the northern terminus of the Passaic-Bergen Rail Line adjacent to the NJ Transit Main Line's Hawthorne station several blocks away from this station. The neighborhood of the original Erie mainline station would benefit from state funding to improve signage, lighting and parking. These efforts did not come to fruition.