Former B&O Train Depot built for the local Resort Hotel
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station, Oakland Maryland
The Oakland Railroad Station is the finest building in the town. Its prominence indicates the importance of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to the town. Its presence made possible the development of Oakland and Garrett County as a resort area. In 1878 after their venture with the Queen City Hotel in Cumberland had proved successful, the B & O erected a resort hotel in Oakland. The present station was built six years after the hotel, providing an impressive depot for visitors to the resort town.
In addition to its part in the growth of the region, the Oakland Railroad Station is one of the finest remaining examples of a Queen Anne style railroad station. Probably built by the Baltimore architectural firm of Baldwin and Pennington (who did the architecturally similar station in Laurel, Maryland in the same year), it has many characteristics of the style: the incised bricks (note the chimneys); the picturesque massing; the mixing of materials, fish scale shingles, brick set against stone; and a sense of texture. The depot incorporates the spirit of the Queen Anne Revival present in America and in England (notably in the buildings of Norman Shaw).
Despite this diversity of materials and shapes, the station has a great deal of dignity and a monumentality which reflects its importance in the rise of the county.
Building Description
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station in Oakland is a large brick structure with a two-story central section and one-story wings branching out of each end along the railroad tracks. The roof on this single-story level runs practically around the whole building, offering a sheltering overhang. This roof is supported by large hammer-beam-type brackets on brick corbels. Asymmetrical in plan, the second-story roof generally parallels the lower main roof, but it is intersected at right angles by a brick and half-timbered gable roof, whose gable ends bear the inscription "AD 1884". Below this half-timbered pedimented gable end is a three-part Bay Window with stone voussoirs. Also jutting from this upper roof on the trackside is a circular tower (the building's most notable feature) topped with an extremely elongated haystack-like conical roofs This and all the roofs except the eastern lower section are slate shingled. Most windows have granite sills and brick or stone voussoirs in the lintels. The upper sash of most of the windows is partly filled with stained glass. Perhaps the unifying feature is the brick, which at the same time is incredibly varied in its use. There are recesses and projections of various shapes and sizes, brick corbels and cornices, incised bricks in the chimney, and several different kinds of molded bricks, all employed in a most imaginative way.
