Checking In on the Train Station

A reader reported in a comment that early Saturday morning there was an Amtrak repair crew at the site of our damaged train station. On Saturday afternoon, Gossips went down to check on the state of things and found that the lower part of the broken wrought iron pillar had been removed and a temporary wood frame constructed to support the roof.

There has been some speculation--fortunately so far unsubstantiated--that the remedy being proposed is to decrease the width of the roof that covers the platform, thus eliminating the need for the broken stanchion, but this seems totally wrongheaded and not very practical. Wouldn't it be easier to repair or replicate the broken iron stanchion than try to reconfigure the portico? The station was restored in 1991-1992, and the project architect for the restoration was William P. Palmer of the firm Mesick, Cohen, Waite. The same firm, now known as Mesick Cohen Baker Wilson, is currently working with Historic Hudson on the restoration of the Dr. Oliver Bronson House. Surely those preservation architects could and should be consulted about the best way to repair the damage caused by the bolting SUV.

The Hudson train station is recognized as one of the Great American Stations, and according to the website, created and maintained by Amtrak to promote "revitalizing America's train stations," the 1991-1992 restoration of the Hudson station was achieved with "funds from New York State." The narrative that accompanies the application to designate the train station a local landmark indicates that the $1.6 million restoration was funded jointly by the Federal Transit Administration, the State of New York, the City of Hudson through a state member item grant, and Amtrak. This involvement of state and federal money would have meant that the New York State Historic Preservation Office, and probably also the National Park Service, was involved in approving the plans for and the execution of the restoration. Will these guardians of our historic resources be involved again, two decades later, to protect their investment and see that the building is repaired properly?

Our train station has the distinction of being the oldest surviving station between New York City and Albany. It is nice to fantasize that when Abraham Lincoln stopped in Hudson on his inaugural journey to Washington in February 1861 and when his funeral train, carrying his body back to Springfield, stopped here in April 1865, that the station as we know it already existed, but, alas, that fantasy is not true. The station that existed in the 1860s--in approximately the same location--was a wooden structure, and it burned to the ground in November 1873. The construction of the current train station began in April 1874 and was completed in October 1874.

The contract to build the new station was awarded to L. S. Smith and William Smith of Catskill, the builders whose skill and labor had, a few years earlier, turned the Calvert Vaux design for Olana into a bricks and mortar reality. The original plans for the station included a "covered platform extending north and south, with a total frontage of 250 feet."
COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK

Historic information about the train station comes from the application for local landmark designation prepared by city historian Pat Fenoff in October 2005. The train station was designated a local landmark by a resolution of the Common Council in February 2006. The historic photograph of the train station is from Historic Hudson's Rowles Studio Collection.