Railroad Stations

With the advent of the railroad as a viable transportation system in the United States, companies and towns alike had to create buildings that would serve the trains and their passengers. Earlier forms of transportation, like canals and the stagecoach turnpike systems, did not need or create specialized buildings. The railroad probably borrowed its ideas for train stations instead from the old tollbooths, which offered shelter for passing coaches and their passengers.

American railroads arrived in 1830 with the incorporation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and quickly spread throughout the industrializing East. The Mount Clare Station in Baltimore, Maryland (1830) holds the honor of the first railroad station in the United States. Crude in style, the station was little more than a brick octagon on the railroad line. Railroads did not begin to incorporate the train shed—a grand portal where the engine came directly into the station—into station design for another five years, with the first one appearing in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1835. Throughout this early period, railroad company engineers, in small towns across America's East and Midwest, would erect small terminals. These stations usually were constructed of wood and were uncovered. Railroad companies placed their highest priority at this time on laying the lines, then on structures to protect equipment, and finally on passenger stations. Urban areas were in a better position to demand permanent structures for their passengers. As early as the 1830s, Boston had stone stations, and by 1847, the Old Colony Railroad station had some of the accoutrements of more modern terminals—a smoking room, barber shop, telegraph office, newsstand, shoeshine, and baggage check room. Providence, Rhode Island also boasted a grand Union Station (1848) that held large and comfortable waiting rooms, space for offices of the railroad, and Romanesque embellishments. Clock towers, train sheds, and arched roofs all helped make these urban stations important architectural structures. These amenities soon became standard in stations across America's cities.

New York's Grand Central Station (1869) was the first terminal to begin to rival Europe's station architecture. Built by the New York Central Railroad, it was the first flagship station in the United States. The centerpiece of the terminal was the train shed, a large glass and steel enclosure that was modeled after St. Pancras Station in England. In an attempt to keep the shed smoke-free, train engineers cut off the engine and used mules and later electricity to bring the trains into the midtown station. Though large for its time, soon the train cars exceeded the length of the original shed. Executives at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company began building larger, grand sheds in cities like Jersey City (1888), New York (1895–1911), Philadelphia (1892–1893), and Pittsburgh (1898). Large stations benefitted the passengers, but also soon became the hallmark representation of a particular railroad company's prowess, as companies like the Illinois Central (1892), Reading Railroad (1891), and Chicago and Northwestern Railway (1911) all erected grandiose urban stations in cities like New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Chicago, respectively.

[Page 643]Passenger rail service and station architecture reached their apex at the turn of the 20th century. Urban America in particular demanded buildings that represented not only the railroad but also their cities, and these larger terminals soon became civic structures. While suburban stations often mimicked domestic architecture, these urban depots soon came to house office blocks on top of the railroad infrastructure. External station architecture morphed from the Italianate style to grander Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, and Beaux-Arts styles in a variety of towns. As America's cities became more crowded and concentrated, urban planners looked to the railroad companies to build stations that alleviated congestion. A variety of cities encouraged railroads to build “Union Stations,” terminals that consolidated many rail lines in one building. Denver (1894), St. Louis (1894), Washington, D.C. (1907–1908), Kansas City (1914), Chicago (1914–1925), and Cincinnati (1933) were some of the cities that built grand structures that housed office buildings, railroad lines, and urban amenities like shopping, barbers, restaurants, and luxurious waiting rooms. These stations soon became meeting places where all types of people of all races, genders, and classes mixed and mingled. While early railroad stations had one waiting room, by the end of the Civil War these terminals had separate rooms for ladies, smoking gentlemen, and immigrants, which mimicked the highly compartmentalized railroad cars. Stations in the Jim Crow South also had segregated waiting rooms for black and white passengers. Station architects learned to accommodate large crowds that would pass through these portals. Larger architecture firms, like McKim, Mead, & White; Graham, Anderson, Probst, & White; and Cass Gilbert all incorporated columns, arches, and new structural techniques to highlight the locomotives, alleviate smoke, and move passengers through the terminal quickly and efficiently.

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