Abandoned train station New York
Stuyvesant Railroad Station, Stuyvesant Landing New York
The Stuyvesant Railroad Station (a.k.a. Stuyvesant Landing Depot) is a compelling symbol of the enormous role that transportation has held in the history of Stuyvesant Landing since the community first formed about 1664. Settled and developed first by Dutchmen from Albany, the landing accessed the Hudson River, the highway for trade during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and more than half of the nineteenth century. Stuyvesant Landing was not only a successful agricultural community in its own right; it was a place to which farmers and merchants came from the immediate hinterland and also as far away as the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts; further with the advent of trains, it enjoyed unexpected industrial development after 1851. Built c. 1881 following a devastating fire in 1880, the railroad station was crafted in the most fashionable and elegant of new styles laid out in a thoughtful, functional arrangement that was designed to accommodate the needs of passengers, shippers of goods, and of railroad personnel. In service until 1958, the station changed very little at all from its original plan and is remarkable for its surviving intact interior features. Between 1958 and 1996, the station was used for storage. Today, though in need of repair, the building is an important emblem for a historic river community and is now destined to be a community center and small museum of local history. It is a landmark for thousands of Amtrak passengers who travel between Albany and Manhattan.
Stuyvesant Landing took its name in 1823, when the Town of Stuyvesant was separated from the Town of Kinderhook. Before then, it was long known as Kinderhook Landing or more often, simply as The Landing. It was a prominent in this role from about the 1660s through 1880. The coming of the railroad in 1851 and then a devastating fire in 1880 had an impact upon the shipping activities carried on at this place.
The hamlet is located at the western end of the Powell Patent, a large piece of land extending about one mile north and south and four miles east and west, and its north-south length is contained within those bounds. Lands within this patent are gently rolling and generally well-suited for agriculture. The small stream called Sawmill kill partially runs through this patent, creating in places a gullied landscape in some areas. Across this patent, running in an east-west direction, is County Route 26A, a very old road leading from Kinderhook village to the river's edge that follows an eighteenth (and probably seventeenth-century) course.
The petition of Thomas Powell, Tewis Abrahamse van Deusen, Claes Van den Bergh, Hendrick Cay, Jocem Kettel, Evert Luycassen, Bert Bagge, and Jan Dircksen was made early in 1664 to New Netherland Director General Peter Stuyvesant for land "in the country to gain their bread with God's help".
On 10 June 1664, Peter Stuyvesant granted permission to them to buy this land; Stuyvesant's permission was confirmed by English Governor Richard Nicolls on 29 March 1665. Taukamakeheke, an Indian, gave a deed for the tract on 27 June 1666 with the purchase of a tract of land "behind the Kinderhook." Settlement began by 1667 through a series of sales to individuals. This early subdivision of the Powell Patent is distinctive because it permitted multiple landowners to live within a relatively small area (unlike most other large parcels in the Kinderhook area that were owned by one and leased to several farmers).
Just to the north of the patent was the property owned by Frans Pieterse Klauw who operated a successful sawmill on the small creek. In the 1670s, his exportation of lumber, plus both locally grown wheat and wheat transported overland from New England, are the earliest known commodities shipped from Kinderhook Landing. The landing served a significant hinterland and remained prominent for shipping agricultural produce through the 1870s. As settlement within Kinderhook and to its east grew during the colonial and Federal periods, the importance of this river landing continued to grow. By the 1760s, a significant New England population had settled in the extreme eastern part of New York. Thus, farmers here and also from the Berkshires in Massachusetts used this landing for shipping goods to New York City, Boston, and other points. Although trade effectively shut down during the Revolution, it resumed with energy afterward. The actual docking facilities were located in the lower part of the hamlet until 1800. A change in the current of the river caused the dock be moved northward to area of the present train station.
In the nineteenth century, the hamlet's growth paralleled the advent of first steamboats and then railroads. By 1823, growth within this western portion of the colonial town of Kinderhook had developed to the extent that it was deemed appropriate for a new township to be formed. Under the auspices of town native Benjamin Franklin Butler, a prominent attorney and politician, the town of Stuyvesant was erected on 21 April 1823, with its own post office and an academy. The hamlet then had 25 dwellings and several stores and shops. The hamlet experienced considerable growth between about 1824 and 1835: there were 50 dwellings, three warehouses, five stores, two taverns, and three lumber yards; and steamboat and two barges weekly plied their way to New York City. Additionally, it was a regular stopping place for steamboats from Albany. It was still the river landing for a large portion of the northern part of Columbia County.
By 1873, it had about 400 inhabitants, an active freighting business to New York city, and several manufactories, which were first developed in the 1850s. Despite its prominence, the community never succeeded in competing with the burgeoning City of Hudson (founded in 1783), located about 12 miles to the south.
In 1830, the Hudson River Railroad, then only a conception to link New York City and Albany by rail transportation, was initiated. At first it was planned to place this railroad somewhat inland, partly to benefit the New England communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts and partly to eliminate competition with the steamboats. And then, in 1841 and 1842, conference delegates from the cities of Hudson and Poughkeepsie made it known that they wanted the railroad and wished not to have trade diverted from their cities. Once having determined the course, work on the railroad began in 1848, with the promise of its being completed in two years. But lack of funds and epidemic disease slowed the project considerably. The line was open from New York City to Poughkeepsie on 31 December 1849. The state legislature passed an act authorizing $1,000,000 to stock the company and further issue of $3,000,000 in bonds on 1 January 1850 to complete the project. So work began, working from Albany southward to meet the tracks at Poughkeepsie. On 16 June 1851 the train traveled from Albany to Hudson (where passengers could travel by steamer either to Poughkeepsie or all the way to New York City). On 1 October 1851, the railroad was completed and the first train went through from Albany to New York City.
Stops at smaller river communities were soon incorporated in the regular train runs, especially at the post office towns along the river. Already one of New York's earlier post office towns, the train stop afforded Stuyvesant new opportunities for development, and in 1853 a stove foundry began operation at the hamlet and a handful of other small manufactories followed. It is presumed a railroad station/depot was built at Stuyvesant Landing between 1851 and 1853.
The earliest stations of the Hudson River Railroad, at least in the smaller communities, were evidently often small wood-frame buildings in the Picturesque style with board-and-batten siding. Later in the 1860s and 1870s, as rail traffic increased, stations became more permanent in appearance and design, adopting a clean rectangular industrial form and masonry construction, presumably in large part for fire protection.
At the close of the Civil War, the Hudson River Railroad was identified as one of the most important internal improvements in Columbia County. At this time Stuyvesant Landing contained one church, a flouring mill, a foundry, two coal yards, a lumber yard, and 34 houses. Its role as a transportation center continued both as a steamboat landing with two vessels locally owned, and by its having a Hudson River Railroad station.
The Beers Atlas of Columbia County (1873) shows, along the east side of River Street, the hotel and the S. W. Gibbs and Co. Iron Foundry. On the west side of the train tracks were a series of enterprises; by J. Wilcoxen & Co. ("forwarders, freighters, dealers in lumber, coal, lime, cement, fertilizers, flour, feed, &c"), H. Clapp, R. L. Morehead, S. G. M. Schultz & Acker Stove works, the post office, Best & Bailey, a meat market, a lumber yard, and J. Clark's Ice House. B. P. Van Slyck operated a stagecoach providing taxi and delivery service to the surrounding hinterland. At this time, dwellings numbered about 43.
Stuyvesant Landing, especially at its waterfront, was devastated by a fire that swept through the hamlet on Thursday morning, 13 May 1880. According to The Evening Register (Hudson, New York, May 13, 1880 afternoon edition), the following buildings were destroyed: four buildings of the Herman Plass steamboat and shipping company, the Shultz and Wilconxson freight office, a dwelling and barber shop owned by Hiram Clapp and his adjoining store; Jacob Membert's saloon and grocery; George Murrell's meat market and saloon; Edward Murrell's dry goods and grocery store, which also contained the Post Office; at the rear of the post office, Shultz' flouring mill; Frank Bray's drugstore; the store houses and office of the Catskill & Albany steamboat company; Jacob Whitbeck's fish-house, nets, etc.; Best & Sons' lumber yard and store; Henry Acker's grocery store; the New Jersey ice company's ice house (with 20,000 tons of ice); the hotel and dwelling of William H. Clapp; the Stuyvesant Stove company foundry; John Wilcoxson's dwelling, barns and outbuildings; George Shultz's dwelling and barns, the house of Senator Stephen H Wendover; and the depot and telegraph office of the Hudson River railroad company. The business losses were extensive, a ten acres wood lot was consumed, along with goods in warehouses, $7,000 worth of stoves, $3,000 worth of cotton; more than a thousand barrels of rye flour. These losses put 150 people out of work for an indefinite period. Trains on the Hudson River railroad were delayed for some time, and telegraph communication was interrupted. The stoveworks was regarded as the most serious loss, for it had employed 80 men and boys.
Although by 30 June 1880, new bricks were arriving at the Landing and preparations for rebuilding the hamlet, notably the stove works, were in place, no specific information pertaining to the replacement of the train depot was published in the newspaper. However, on 6 July 1881, The Evening Register (Hudson, 1881), informs that:
This indicates that the present station was operational by this time. The new brick station depot was constructed in a fashionable style that would have appeared quite modern and in harmony with other new construction that occurred at Stuyvesant Landing following the great fire. The recollections of Joe Manti give a description of the interior with respect to its uses during much of the twentieth century.
The station was laid out as such: the baggage room took up the first ten feet on the southerly side, the ticket office took up the next 15, and the waiting room took up the remaining space. At each end of the building was pot-belly stove. On the exterior, the signs at each end said "Stuyvesant," and on either side of the name was a number: one reflected the miles to New York City (124) and the other the miles to Buffalo. And the station was manned by a station agent (Sam Ellison, for many years) and a baggage man (William Ogden, also from Stuyvesant).
The Beers Atlas of 1888 indicates that some of the loss after the fire was permanent. However, it also depicts how the railroad expanded its facilities with a siding that accessed a new freight house at the river's edge (on the west side of the tracks) and a little to the north of the present station. The siding and freight house are no longer extant.
The Stuyvesant Railroad Station typifies those built along the Hudson River Railroad from the 1860s through the 1880s, with its rectangular shape, one-story brick construction, simple Italianate decoration, and metal canopy. Although the line has not been comprehensively surveyed, the Stuyvesant station is one of the earliest remaining stations on the line. The earliest may be the one in Peekskill (c. 1860), and the other two that pre-date the Stuyvesant station and are stylistically related to it are the stations in Cold Spring, Putnam County, and in Hudson (1874). Also, the second Peekskill station (1890) relates stylistically to these four earlier ones. A number of stations were replaced in the 1890s and early-20th century and these tended to be larger and more sophisticated architecturally than the earlier ones, often reflecting Queen Anne or Beaux-Arts taste.
The station's lot today is the result of the closing of two railroad track crossings that existed to the north of the station. When the freight house fell to disuse by the 1950s, the railroad deeded these lots to the Town of Stuyvesant. The station was closed in 1958 and the building was sold (for $1,001) to Robert Sherman, who used the building for storage. The town acquired the station from Mr. Sherman in 1996 and is undertaking its restoration under an Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) program.
Building Description
The Stuyvesant Railroad Station (a.k.a. Stuyvesant Landing Depot), an Italianate-style building built c. 1881, is located on Riverview Avenue in the Hudson River community of Stuyvesant Landing, Columbia County, New York. Stuyvesant Landing has been river landing since the 1660s and its Victorian period architecture reflects the town as it stood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The station and Riverview Avenue are set at the base of a substantial terrace that rises from the river level of Riverview Avenue. The hamlet is laid out lengthwise along these terraces, with most streets paralleling the river. Most houses are sited to take advantage of the view of the river, with, for example, a main porch or an entry fronting the river (to the west) even though a roadside entry may be on some other side of the building. Along Riverview Avenue, near the station, are located a hotel (converted to apartments), a general store and post office, and beyond, to the south, dwellings. The neighborhood (and most of the hamlet) has a very historic character, with a variety of eighteenth and nineteenth-century architectural styles represented in surviving domestic, religious, educational, and commercial buildings.
The station is set on a small lot adjacent and east of the train tracks (now owned by Amtrak) that run along the east side of the Hudson between New York City and Rensselaer/Albany, New York. The tracks are basically in their historic location, but are now substantially banked with heavy crushed stone, clearly making them no longer associate directly with the station. Also, there are no platforms or crossing structures remaining. Between the train tracks and the river is a narrow strip of open land now used for recreation and leisure, though once this land was occupied by industrial, warehouse, and railway structures. Behind (east of) the station is a vacant wooded lot. To the north, is a Tuscan Villa style dwelling and an eighteenth-century Dutch Colonial dwelling.
Though the present condition of the Stuyvesant Railroad Station is deteriorated, an unusually great amount of its original material and ornamentation survives intact. The five-bay brick building is 20 feet wide by 50 feet long. Because it was highly visible and approached from all directions, all sides of the building were fully developed with respect to ornamentation and architectural detail. Under the hipped roof, a molded wood cornice ornaments the eaves. Below it, a two-foot deep cornice is worked in brick. At its top, just under the eaves, a corbeled brickwork creates a delicate ornamental band around the building. The rest of the cornice is plain brickwork, defined at its base by a band consisting of two rows of brick that are set out slightly from the wall. Immediately below this, a curved canopy is fixed to the building and extends its protective roof five feet out from the walls of the building. This canopy is supported by large iron brackets, cast in an ornamental pattern. The present roofing material over the main building is cementitious shingles, and the canopy is covered with standing seam metal, although it is very deteriorated. Windows and doors are surrounded with a Romanesque arch worked in brick; they are set on stone sills. Over the doorways, a semi-circular transom fills each arch.
The south end of the station contains a window on the west side and a doorway on the east side that leads into the baggage room. Also on the south wall is the surviving brick chimney (another was on the north wall), worked in a paneled design. The east elevation contains three equally spaced windows separated by two doorways. These doorways lead into the ticket office and into the passenger waiting room.
The north elevation is badly deteriorated and missing a chimney, but contains two windows that afford light and a view to the north. The west elevation, which faces the tracks and the river, contains two doors leading to the baggage room and the waiting room, two arch-top windows, and a substantial protruding bay window in the ticket office. This window affords a 180-degree view of the train tracks. The bay was constructed to fit just under the canopy and its three windows are smaller scale than the others, with arched surrounds.
The interior of the depot has been little changed, although very deteriorated. As described by Joe Manti, who once worked at the station, the functional interior of the building was partitioned into three areas.
The baggage room took up the first ten feet on the southerly side, the ticket office took up the next 15, and the waiting room took up the remaining space. At each end of the building was a pot-belly stove.
The passenger waiting room is fully paneled with milled shiplap. A slightly narrower and beaded board is applied vertically in the lower part of the room between the plain baseboard and a deeply molded chair rail. Above the chair rail, the paneling is horizontally applied. The surrounds of doorways leading outside are deeply molded with large milled rosettes set in squares at the baseboard, the stops of the chair rail, and at the top of the door. The window surrounds are of similar deep molding and follow the curve of the arch at the top; the molding continues across the bottom of the windows rather than a window sill. The interior partition between the waiting room and the ticket office is made up of diagonally set paneling both above and below the chair rail. Interior doorways leading to the ticket office are square-topped paneled doors with an "X" pattern worked at top and bottom of the door. Between these two doors a small ticket window has a molded surround with arched top.
The other side of this partition, in the ticket office, is also diagonally paneled. Chair rail exists here, but at two different heights on either side of the door leading from the customer vestibule to the waiting room. The change in height suggests that some changes were made at an early date to the arrangements of the ticket counter. Marks on the floor indicate the presence of a ticket counter, no longer extant. In the southeast corner, a shallow closet was added which extends along the exterior wall. At the west side of the room, the bay window is open for access by ticket office staff.
The baggage room has diagonally set paneling. One of its doorways (with no door, perhaps also permitting heat from the stove to pass into the ticket room) is wide, providing for larger pieces of baggage, while the other is conventionally size, with the square "X" panels at top and bottom.