Milton Railroad Station

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

The train station was 76 years, until the late 1950s in operation and is one of the few still existing station building on the west bank of the river. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places ( NRHP) on 28 August 2007. It served as a tasting room and a citizens group renovated the house to the use as a community center.

Description

The station is located at the point at which the coming from the center of Dock Road reaches the river, surrounded by a small former industrial area. A single-lane gravel road, the Old Indian Trail Road, heads south. A short overgrown siding on the east side is an associated component. It is no longer connected with the still -powered tracks between the station and the river.

The building itself is a one-story wood frame construction built rectangular building with the dimensions 9x25 m with a wide sheet pitched roof and overhanging eaves. The side walls running in the groove and feathers are painted red. The oldest part of the building rests on a foundation of sandstone, the southern third of the building sits on brick pillars.

Most of the building's interior was designed for the handling of passenger traffic. It consists of a waiting room with fireplace, ticket office, two toilets and corridors. The walls of the passenger public spaces are paneled; freight handling facilities are designed less complicated. Part of the railway typical communication devices is still in the attic of the building.

History

The location of the station was used by the local Indians for traffic, long before the 17th century arrived, the first colonists. The Dock Road follows a ravine with water running to the river and is one of the few places where access to further away from the river settlements was easy. As at 1710, the Town of Marlborough was settled later, this place was the limit of the first two land trusts, and some of the first houses were built in the vicinity. A dock and associated buildings were in the late 18th century.

This collection of houses continued to grow in the first half of the 19th century. The settlement was, which led to a regular port of call of steamships and the eastern end of the Farmer's Turnpike to the foot of the Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner. A wheelbarrow factory contributed to a regular cargo volume. When the West Shore Railroad began to attempt to acquire land, to compete with the New York Central line on the opposite riverbank, first stirred resistance. These judicial proceedings were completed in 1882, and the station was opened designed by the architects Wilson Brothers & Co. of Philadelphia and built and the following year.

The West Shore Railroad was not able to compete with the wealthy and powerful New York Central Railroad and was taken over by these two years later, in 1885, after the bankruptcy. The new owners expanded the station in 1890 to its present size in order to make the handling of freight shipments more efficiently. A decade later the railway company built a one heating system and upgraded the interior of the building.

In the 1950s, the air traffic and the interstate highways began to be the competition for the railways. 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 stählerene stairs to the basement and removed the partitions which demarcated the office of the station master and the ticket office from the waiting room. Instead, a counter was installed to the wine bar.

The company sold the building in 1998 to the city. A citizens group, Friends of Milton Station, collected over $ 100,000 in donations for the renovation of the building to allow a new use as a community center. The city is looking for other donors to raise the rest of the needed funds.