Union Station

There's a really cool website called Art In Ruins that catalogs the redevelopment of historic buildings in Providence. I picked downtown's Union Station building to discuss for this post. I thought the story of Union Station was really interesting, so I'll just include it all and then discuss it at the bottom.

Art in Ruins says:
Providence's Union Station was rehabilitated as part of the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project of the Federal Railroad Administration during the late eighties. It was turned from a functioning intermodal station (trains and buses) to offices and ground floor/basement level restaurants. The Courtyard Marriott was added later in the same architectural style. The Station is the main offices for WRNI and the Rhode Island Foundation, as well as the Rafael Bistro, Ri Ra bar, Capital Grill and Union Station Brewery.

(From the RI Foundation website)
Providence was already a thriving city in 1847 when Brown-educated architect Thomas A. Tefft’s Union railroad depot, the original train station, opened in 1847. The station’s Exchange Terrace site backed on to a large cove and a small hill where the State Capitol would be built four decades later. At the time, the immediate surrounding acreage looked nearly the same as it appeared when Roger Williams first arrived in Rhode Island more than 200 years earlier, (although it was soon to face a bustling market area).

Widely considered “a brilliant example of Romanesque architecture,” Union Station was then the longest building in America, at a disputed 700 feet long (some claimed it was only 625). Flanked by two graceful towers on one end, and an octagonal pavilion on the other, the building featured Railroad Hall, which was to house many public meetings, such as the one addressed by not-yet-nominated presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln.

As railroad demand grew, so did the need for more terminal space, made possible only by the filling of the cove (now the area surrounded by Union Station, the State Capitol, and Providence Place mall) in 1890. The question of what to do with the now-undersized but still-glorious train station was answered by a catastrophic fire which destroyed it in February, 1896.

The new distinctive yellow brick Union Station (a stylistic trend of the 1890s) was designed by the firm of Stone, Carpenter, and Willson. “The opening of the station [in 1898] marks a new era in the history of this city,” wrote the Providence Journal. And why not? Robber baron J. Pierpont Morgan had purchased 130 independently-owned train lines and transformed them into a single monopoly rail line: the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company. Nearly 300 trains were entering and leaving the station daily, and one observer predicted that the population of Providence would grow to 500,000 in the next 50 years!

Instead, Providence’s population peaked at less than half that, and airplane, car, bus, and truck travel proved to be mighty competitors. By the 1950s, the number of trains had decreased 75 percent. When the federal government in the 1970s proposed a major upgrade to the rail system which was now Amtrak, local city planners saw the opportunity to eliminate what had become a physical barrier between downtown and Smith Hill, and came up with a Capital Center plan which included rail and river relocation and the transformation of the train station and the area between it and the Capitol into more modern use for offices, stores, tourism, and more.

On April 26, 1987, just ten months after a much smaller train station opened a short walk away, the now-vacant Union Station again suffered a devastating fire, apparently dashing the plans of developers who had begun a planned $11 million worth of renovations for a three story retail location.

What emerged instead were the North American headquarters of London-based Cookson America in the central terminal, the Providence Chamber of Commerce in the westernmost building, and a variety of offices and restaurants in the remaining space.

Today, Union Station again faces a surging Providence, this time on both sides. Out the front door is a public skating rink and a plaza prominently ringed by city and federal government and the financial district. Out the back door is Providence Place mall, a Marriott hotel, Waterplace Park and its Waterfire, and several vacant lots likely to be developed in the near future.

Although the original Romanesque architecture of Union Station has been lost, I think it's really interesting to see the transformation over time. After the first fire, it was rebuilt in 1898, around the time of the Beaux Arts architecture movement. It says the yellow bricks were typical of the time, but I don't know if they were typical of the Beaux Arts movement. It is neat to see how much the architecture of one building can change and what influenced those changes. Beyond the influence of architectural fads, it seems like functionality was also significantly influential to the transformation of this building. It represents the shift in dominant transportation methods that was happening all over the country at that time. Union Station was rebuilt to maximize its functionality over changing times, but was also influenced by changing architectural preferences.

Union Station in 1982 (left) & today (below).

All Photos from Art In Ruins.

chapter 1

And we're blogging...

Looking (way) back on Chapter 1, I remembered that it was the first time I made a conscious connection between Henry Ford and the current state of this country and the developed world. I don't think I even realized that his name had become an "ism." I knew about Ford and the whole car thing, but I didn't realize that his influence stretched so far beyond cars. Immediately after I read the word "Fordism," it clicked in my brain that his development of mass-production machinery, techniques, and products has become the foundation of developed societies.

I remember first hearing about how Ford (in partnership with the government I think?) had thousands of miles of rail road tracks ripped up in order to create more demand for his cars. I guess it's hard to blame him for all this though, because back then environmental issues were not a concern. Back then I probably would have been very proud to have thought of all this. Mass-production has been a great accomplishment for mankind, but it could also become it's greatest mistake.

Mass-production essentially means mass-consumption of natural resources and mass-production of waste. That is not to say that it's not possible to have mass-production with sustainable resource use and sustainable waste production. I don't know if it is or not. I do know that presently, we are depleting the planet's resources at an alarming rate and screwing future generations (our children and grandchildren). I think they're going to be pretty pissed at us (especially at Bush) for not doing more.

So it's not that I'm blaming Henry Ford for all the world's environmental problems...but when grossly simplified, I'd say he's one of the larger contributors.