Rahway, New Jersey

Rahway /ˈrɔːweɪ/ is a city in southern Union County, New Jersey, United States. It is part of the New York metropolitan area, being 21.6 miles (34.8 km) southwest of Manhattan and 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Staten Island. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 27,346, reflecting an increase of 846 (+3.2%) from the 26,500 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 1,175 (+4.6%) from the 25,325 counted in the 1990 Census.

History

Rahway and the surrounding area were once the home of the Lenni Lenape Native Americans, and tradition states that the city was named after Rahwack, a local tribal chief.

Formal European settlement began in 1664 with the purchase by the English from the Lenape of the Elizabethtown Tract, which encompassed lands from the mouth of the Raritan River and included all of present-day Union County as well as parts of Somerset, Middlesex, Morris and Essex counties. The Seventeenth Century Clark House is one of the oldest buildings in the state.

Rahway (NJT station)

Rahway is a New Jersey Transit train station in Rahway, New Jersey, with service on the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast lines. It is in downtown Rahway on an embankment completed in 1913, with bridges over Milton Avenue and Irving and Cherry Streets. The present station was built by New Jersey Transit at a cost of $16 million and opened in early 1999. It replaced a passenger station built by the Penn Central and the New Jersey Department of Transportation in 1974, which was an Amtrak stop from 1971 to 1975. The City of Rahway completed a $600,000 public plaza in front of the station in 2001.

Rahway station is just northeast of the Perth Amboy Junction, where the Northeast Corridor and the North Jersey Coast lines split at Union Tower, so Rahway is one of several transfer stations on NJ Transit. The station has an island platform for the Trenton and Long Branch-bound side of the station. The New York City-bound platform is a side platform more typical of the Northeast Corridor. Service bound for Long Branch and other points on the North Jersey Coast Line use one side of this island platform just east of the junction, as these trains would not be able to switch off of the main track in time to switch onto tracks at the Junction towards the Jersey Shore.