Union Station, New Haven CT
Main entrance
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. The Italianate inspired building sat above the railroad cut on the old Farmington Canal, located on State St next to Custom House Square. The deficiencies in the station’s design were thick soot and flames on all the platforms.
New York-New Haven Railroad merged with the Hartford-New Haven Railroad in 1872. 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. It was later destroyed by fire.
The Austin-designed landmark was converted to a bustling city market. 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. But in 1894, fire destroyed the old depot.
A station was built from 1917 for the New York-New Haven-Hartford Railroad. Designed by noted architect Cass Gilbert, it was completed and opened in 1920. It was thus the second station in its location on Union Ave, and the third major passenger station to serve New Haven. [Gilbert’s other famous works included NY’s Woolworth Building, tallest building in the world from 1913-30, and Washington DC’s U.S Supreme Court Building].
Union Station was a great name because it was a union point of various rail services and companies. In the New York-New Haven-Hartford Railroad heyday, the station was designed as a physical symbol of the Company’s size and strength.
waiting room, long oak benches, high, arched windows
and gilded, coffered ceiling
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Gilbert’s 1918-20 station was closed to train travellers, amid plans for its demolition. Union Station deserved better. 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. Unlike Grand Central, New Haven’s Union Station was to have a proper setting. 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. This was described in a 1910 report to the Civic Improvement Commission, by Gilbert and landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmstead.
But 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. Worse still, the mayor and citizens backing the plan were fighting. There was no plaza in front of Union Station and no boulevard linking it to the CBD.
But where the public sector failed, the private sector succeeded. 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. The railroad company built a new station in Providence in 1898 and the new Boston South Station in 1899. From 1903-13 the improvements cost heaps. 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.
The front entrance was a bit boring. See Melbourne's impressive station entrance, largely from the same era but remember that Melbourne's station sits on a big corner!
Ticket sales windows
But 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. Worse still, the mayor and citizens backing the plan were fighting. There was no plaza in front of Union Station and no boulevard linking it to the CBD.
But where the public sector failed, the private sector succeeded. 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. The railroad company built a new station in Providence in 1898 and the new Boston South Station in 1899. From 1903-13 the improvements cost heaps. 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.
The front entrance was a bit boring. See Melbourne's impressive station entrance, largely from the same era but remember that Melbourne's station sits on a big corner!
New Haven’s station was projected to cost $1.5 mill. But by 1918, WWI and post-war inflation reduced the buying power of the railroad’s money. Costs had to be cut. 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. In May 1918 the station burned down, and was replaced 2 years on an adjacent lot by the current station.
Gilbert cited the marble cladding and ornament used in Waterbury City Hall CT, but on a much grander scale. Those façade had a strong but simple cornice, undoubtedly intended as marble but executed in terra cotta. Even so great care was taken in obtaining maximum character from the great arches and carefully articulated brickwork. The 1983-6 restoration by Herbert Newman Architects revived Gilbert’s original design. The station’s interior was New Haven’s grandest room, at 115’ long with a great gilded, coffered ceiling. The walls appeared to be travertine.
After WW2 the New York-New Haven-Hartford Railroad declined, due to direct federal support of auto and air travel. Union Station was shuttered in 1972, leaving only the section under the tracks open to passengers. By the 1970s, Union Station was closed and threatened with demolition. Local citizens successfully rallied to add the building to National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Faced with the growing costs of the 1970s energy crisis, the federal government developed the N.E Corridor Improvement Project.
Union Station again faced demolition, but it was renovated during the 1980s and re-opened in 1985. The newly rehabilitated Union Station continues to function normally today.
The New Union Ave station appeared grand, evoking a regal hotel and luxurious railroad travel. But its site was inconvenient and derided. The coastline came right up to the station, causing costly repairs.
Passengers go from the waiting room and ticket areas at ground level,
down the elevators to the platforms below
In Ap 2020, Union Station celebrated its anniversary. For 100 years it has been a travel cornerstone in Connecticut, a historic and architectural treasure powering the state’s economic development. Union Station connects the New Haven Line running into New York, while the Hartford Line heads north to Hartford and Springfield. It is also a key link on Amtrak’s N.E Corridor, from Boston to Washington and on.