Milton Railroad Station

View of the former Milton train station from the southwest (2008).

The Milton Railroad Station is a former station building on Dock Road in Milton , New York on the Hudson River . It is a rectangular building built in the late 19th century for the West Shore Railroad .

The station was in operation for 76 years until the late 1950s and is one of the few remaining station buildings on the west bank of the river. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on August 28, 2007 . It served as a room for wine tastings and a group of citizens renovated the house in order to use it as a community center.

description

The station is located at the point where the Dock Road coming from the center of the village meets the river, in the middle of a small former industrial area. A single lane gravel road, the Old Indian Trail Road, leads south. A short overgrown siding on the east side is an integral part . It is no longer connected to the tracks that are still in use between the train station and the river.

The building itself is a single-storey, wooden post- construction, rectangular building measuring 9 × 25 m with a wide sheet metal gable roof and overhanging eaves . The tongue and groove side walls are painted red. The oldest part of the building supported on a foundation made of sandstone , the southern third of the structure sits on brick piers.

Most of the interior of the building was designed for passenger traffic. It consists of a waiting room with a fireplace , ticket office, two toilets and hallways. The walls of the rooms intended for passengers are paneled ; the cargo handling rooms are designed to be less complex. Some of the typical railway communication facilities are still in the attic of the building.

history

The location of the station was used for traffic by the local Indians long before the first colonists arrived in the 17th century . Dock Road follows a canyon with a watercourse to the river and is one of the few places where access to settlements further away from the river has been easy. When the future Town of Marlborough was settled around 1710 , this point was the boundary of the first two land foundations, and some of the first houses were built nearby. A dock and the associated structures were built towards the end of the 18th century.

This collection of houses continued to grow in the first half of the 19th century. The settlement became a regular port of call for steamers and the eastern end of the Farmer's Turnpike , which led to the foot of Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner . A wheelbarrow factory contributed to a regular cargo volume. When the West Shore Railroad began acquiring land in an attempt to compete with the New York Central route across the river, resistance initially arose. These court proceedings were completed in 1882, and the station was by the architect Wilson Brothers & Co. of Philadelphia designed and built and opened the following year.

The train station around 1913

The West Shore Railroad failed to compete with the wealthy and powerful New York Central Railroad and was taken over by the latter two years later, in 1885, after bankruptcy . The new owner expanded the station to its present size around 1890 in order to make the handling of freight shipments more efficient. A decade later, the railway company installed a heating system and upgraded the interior of the building.

In the 1950s, air travel and the interstate highways began to compete with rail travel . The last passenger train stopped in Milton in 1959, freight traffic ended a few years later. A local winery bought the station and used it for wine tastings. They built a steel staircase to the basement and removed the partition walls that separated the station master's office and the ticket counters from the waiting room. Instead, a bar was built in to serve wine.

The company sold the building to the city in 1998. A civic group, Friends of Milton Station , raised over $ 100,000 in donations to renovate the building for a new use as a civic center. The city is looking for more donors to raise the rest of the funds it needs.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Mary Lou Mahan: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Milton Railroad Station ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . 2007-01-2007. Retrieved January 29, 2009.
2. ↑ Vivian Yess Wadlin: Milton Training Days: 125 Year Old Station is Rescued, Will Be Rehabilitated, and Reused ( English ) In: About Town . Vivian Wadlin. Archived from the original on August 27, 2008. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 30, 2009: “ There is still money to be raised and work to be done. For instance, the standing seam metal roof will cost about $ 40,000, a sprinkler system $ 20,000, architecturally correct windows and doors, about $ 60,000 ... " 
3. ^ Carrie Ross: Station's ticket to a fresh start (English) . In: Times-Herald Record , Ottaway Community Newspapers , May 2007. Retrieved January 30, 2009. 
4. ↑ Bruno Battistoli: Marlborough has a plan to revive a historic station (English) . In: Times-Herald Record , Ottaway Community Newspapers , June 23, 2003. Retrieved January 30, 2009. " Marlborough is seeking state grants to help with the estimated $ 700,000 initial cost of the restoration of the Milton train station. " 

Coordinates: 41 ° 39 ′ 9 ″  N , 73 ° 57 ′ 15 ″  W.