Union Station again faced demolition, but it was renovated during the 1980s and re-opened in 1985. Faced with the growing costs of the 1970s energy crisis, the federal government developed the N.E Corridor Improvement Project. Local citizens successfully rallied to add the building to National Register of Historic Places in 1975. By the 1970s, Union Station was closed and threatened with demolition. Union Station was shuttered in 1972, leaving only the section under the tracks open to passengers. The walls appeared to be travertine.Īfter WW2 the New York-New Haven-Hartford Railroad declined, due to direct federal support of auto and air travel. The station’s interior was New Haven’s grandest room, at 115’ long with a great gilded, coffered ceiling. The 1983-6 restoration by Herbert Newman Architects revived Gilbert’s original design. Even so great care was taken in obtaining maximum character from the great arches and carefully articulated brickwork. Those façade had a strong but simple cornice, undoubtedly intended as marble but executed in terra cotta. Gilbert cited the marble cladding and ornament used in Waterbury City Hall CT, but on a much grander scale. In May 1918 the station burned down, and was replaced 2 years on an adjacent lot by the current station. Earlier Gilbert studies for the exterior show a more robust modelling of the entry façade, with 4 projecting piers of paired columns with monumental sculptures framing 3 heroic, recessed arched portals. But by 1918, WWI and post-war inflation reduced the buying power of the railroad’s money. New Haven’s station was projected to cost $1.5 mill. See Melbourne's impressive station entrance, largely from the same era but remember that Melbourne's station sits on a big corner! It also rebuilt and electrified the line from New Haven to New York, increasing it from 2 from 4 tracks, backed by financier JP Morgan. From 1903-13 the improvements cost heaps. The railroad company built a new station in Providence in 1898 and the new Boston South Station in 1899. Since 1900 New York-New Haven-Hartford Railroad, which controlled most New England transportation south of the Massachusetts Turnpike, had been strongly investing in expansion. There was no plaza in front of Union Station and no boulevard linking it to the CBD.īut where the public sector failed, the private sector succeeded. Worse still, the mayor and citizens backing the plan were fighting. This was described in a 1910 report to the Civic Improvement Commission, by Gilbert and landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmstead.īut a grand plan was not the priority of Mayor then implementing a plan of its scale would have required great vision and substantial financial resources. Travellers would exit the station and plaza via a broad boulevard, the terminus of which was to be another plaza on the edge of the city’s original square. Unlike Grand Central, New Haven’s Union Station was to have a proper setting. Conceived by Gilbert as a grand entry to the city, New Haven’s new train station was to be monumental in the Beaux Arts tradition first made popular in the U.S by the Chicago World Columbian Exposition of 1893 and exemplified by terminals like New York’s 1913 Grand Central Terminal. Gilbert’s 1918-20 station was closed to train travellers, amid plans for its demolition. In the New York-New Haven-Hartford Railroad heyday, the station was designed as a physical symbol of the Company’s size and strength. Union Station was a great name because it was a union point of various rail services and companies. It was thus the second station in its location on Union Ave, and the third major passenger station to serve New Haven. Designed by noted architect Cass Gilbert, it was completed and opened in 1920. But in 1894, fire destroyed the old depot.Ī station was built from 1917 for the New York-New Haven-Hartford Railroad. Its size and closeness to rail and Long Wharf, along with being in New Haven’s growing dry goods district, made this a popular shopping area. The Austin-designed landmark was converted to a bustling city market. Re-decorated in 1874 in 2nd French Empire style, the station stood at the site of the Union Station parking garage, 2ks from New Haven Green on the old marshlands. New York-New Haven Railroad merged with the Hartford-New Haven Railroad in 1872. The deficiencies in the station’s design were thick soot and flames on all the platforms. The Italianate inspired building sat above the railroad cut on the old Farmington Canal, located on State St next to Custom House Square. The first Union Station in New Haven CT, a depot building designed by prominent local architect Henry Austin, opened to the public in 1848 by the New York-New Haven Railroad.
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