The current station is the second on the site. The original station opened on November 19, 1836, at the east end of the opening segment of the
Morris and Essex Railroad to
Orange; for the first couple of decades trains east of
Newark ran over the
New Jersey Rail Road to
Jersey City. The present station opened in 1903 after two years of construction, located on the
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad main line from
Hoboken to
Denville,
Scranton and
Buffalo The
Newark Drawbridge connecting to the station and crossing the
Passaic River to the east also opened in 1903. A number of western expansions were built, and
Hoboken Terminal, the current eastern end of the line, opened in 1907. In 1945, the Morris and Essex Railroad officially merged into the Lackawanna Railroad, which had leased it since 1868 (though the Morris and Essex' separate identity had been largely lost years before). DL&W merged with the
Erie Railroad in 1960 to form the
Erie Lackawanna Railroad, which was absorbed by
Conrail in 1976;
NJ Transit has operated all passenger service since 1983. The station had served several Lackawanna and then Erie Lackwanna passenger trains. These included the
Lake Cities, Owl/
New York Mail, Twilight/
Pocono Express and the DLW flagship train, the
Phoebe Snow. However, all intercity service ended by 1970. The
station building has been listed in the
state and
federal registers of historic places since 1984 and is part of the
Operating Passenger Railroad Stations Thematic Resource.
Renovation From 2004 to 2008 the station was renovated. The station changed from having two outside low platforms, with walkways across one track to the middle track, to having two high platforms, one of them an island platform, to facilitate cross-platform transfers. The historic westbound shelter was removed in the project and new westbound waiting areas were built.
Proposed Scranton–New York City line In 2023, a new
Amtrak line was proposed between
Scranton and
New York with an estimated half a million riders annually by 2030. It is planned to hit . The closest station to the New York
Penn Station on the line is Newark Broad Street. The next stop will be either
Morristown station or
Montclair's Bay Street station depending on the schedule it is running. == Station layout and services ==