These days, most cities have dozens of roads entering their limits, and every one of them leads to your home or business.
When we roll the red carpet out for an old friend or distinguished guest, we tend to do so from our own front doorsteps. Occasionally, you might see that some adventurous greeting party has spray-painted something on a bed-sheet and hung it from a highway overpass, but generally, the moment our guests feel they’ve arrived at our homes—the first point of friendly contact—is when the car pulls into the driveway.
For all the automobile has done to increase our sense of freedom, it seems, too, to have greatly constricted the boundaries of what we consider home.
Before motorways connected cities, eventually filling the space between with new and often uninspired construction, the train station acted as everyone’s welcome mat. You knew you were home when the train pulled in the station. If you were lucky, there was a welcoming party on the platform to greet you.
As with our homes these days, cities took pride in their stations. They imbued them with their tastes and personalities, hoping to offer their best faces forward. The best architects and builders were hired, and great planning and spending went into offering the grandest and most fitting impression possible.
If all goes according to plan, within the next two years, Holyoke, Northampton and Greenfield will see the return of passenger rail. Funding is in place and work has already begun on upgrading the track and planning the details of the service, which will offer commuter connections between the Valley and points south, and a return of the Amtrak Vermonter taking passengers to the Green Mountain State and beyond.
Greenfield is the only city that is certain where in town the train will stop. Construction is underway for a new transportation hub on the corner of Olive Street and Route 10, a short, uphill walk to downtown. The station will replace a former car dealership only a few hundred yards from the city’s original station, which has been turned into the Greenfield Energy Park.
When the funding for passenger rail was first announced in the summer of 2009, officials in Northampton and Holyoke said they didn’t have funding in place for more than basic station services. Neither city was certain of a location.
Though both cities have handsome Victorian-era stations still standing by the rails, they both had since been repurposed (restaurants in Northampton and a machine shop in Holyoke) and would cost a lot to rehabilitate. Officials in both cities said other sites were being considered.
“Renovating these facilities remains three times as expensive on average than replacing them with modular, pre-engineered structures,” wrote then-Holyoke Mayor Mike Sullivan in a June 15, 2009 email to the Advocate. He wrote that the city was looking at a site for a pre-fab station two blocks away from the original station.
At the time, Northampton’s Union Station was occupied by two restaurants and a catering service, and city officials said the city only had funding for a “covered self service ticket kiosk” on a refurbished platform. A “multi-nodal facility” with indoor station would likely be located elsewhere.
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Last April 29, the UMass Preservation Initiative presented “Preserving a Gem, Promoting Economic Development—The Case of H.H. Richardson’s Holyoke Train Station,” a walking tour and panel discussion held at the station and nearby Heritage State Park. Organizers expected a crowd of a few dozen train buffs; instead, hundreds turned out for the event.
Holyoke Mayor Elaine Pluta took the occasion to announce a policy change in her city, commiting to preserve the Richardson station as a station stop and as a possible site for other appropriate business. Kathleen G. Anderson, Holyoke planning and economic development director, said a design consultant estimates the building’s rehabilitation at three million dollars. By comparison, earlier in the month, the state pegged the cost to rehabilitate Springfield’s Union Station at $20 million.
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As dignified entrances to a city go, Holyoke ‘s H. H. Richardson rail station has few peers. A prime example of the famed Bostonian and Victorian-era architect’s work, it is the only Richardson station in Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River. The nearest station to the east of the river in in Palmer.
Richardson was not only responsible for many of the Northeast’s most distinguished buildings, but his influence on other architects working in New England has been profound, His Gothic style—which often featured innovative uses of massive, roughly-hewn, many-hued rock in sweeping arches underneath conical slate roofs—was adapted and repurposed so often that the style was given the name Richardsonian Romanesque. Examples include Northampton’s rail station, as well as the Forbes Library and much of Smith College.
In his day, in addition to designing buildings such as Trinity Church in Boston or the New York State House, Richardson designed 12 train stations, nine of which were designed for the Boston & Albany Rail Road. Many of these rural stations that ran through the center of the state were done in collaboration with landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted—designer of New York’s Central Park and Boston’s Emerald Necklace—who designed the grounds around the stations.
The director of the rail line at the time, Charles Sprague Sargent, noticed that a station master in Newtonville had taken it upon himself to decorate his station with flowers and plantings; inspired, Sargent recommended to his board that an investment in the appearance of their other stations might attract more city dwellers to the suburbs. Sargent was also the director of the Arnold Arboretum in Boston (one of the parks in Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace of parks), and he knew just who to hire to spruce up the rail stations.
Together, Richardson and Olmsted actively sought to design rail stations that were comfortable and offered passengers every convenience. Instead of the awe-inspiring majesty of an urban station, these were one and two story buildings with sloped roofs nestled into the trees and bushes. They were designed to be places where people didn’t mind waiting to board a train or greet an arriving one.
Many of these small masterpieces were destroyed when the Massachusetts Turnpike followed the same route the rail line had. Palmer’s magnificent station is now occupied by a restaurant whose owner is eager for the train to stop at his platform. He has plans to renovate the Olmsted landscaping (including a stone grotto with a fountain) that has since been buried under many feet of dirt.
Holyoke’s station didn’t include much landscaping, and Richardson’s friend and collaborator was not involved. Still, the downtown building—originally dubbed the Connecticut River Railroad Station—shares the sensibilities of the more rural cottages. It’s low and narrow, like a ranch, its arms spread wide in welcome.
When originally built, the Holyoke station included waiting rooms for both men and women, and a special waiting section for processing immigrants from Canada. Before the city bought it, the previous owner—who had used it as a machine shop—had always wanted it preserved in memory of his own immigration in his youth.
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When it was announced last March that Union Station Banquet and Catering, Union Station Steak and Seafood, and Spaghetti Freddy’s were all leaving the Union Station in Northampton, city economic development director Teri Anderson told the Daily Hampshire Gazette that she saw “potential” in the site as a future station, but that her office was still evaluating other locations.
For rail buffs and historic preservation enthusiasts, it’s hard to image a better front door at which Northampton would greet visitors and shelter travelers than the existing station.
While the Northampton station was not designed by Richardson, its designers clearly had similar goals in mind.
It’s not a building that evokes the majesty of a palace or the solidity of a bank. Rather, the Northampton station evokes the grandeur of a fine home, with a long veranda to welcome guests. Like the Academy of Music just up the street, the station is a home that belongs to the people of Northampton—a station stop even a president would be glad to have as her destination.
