Buildings of New England

When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, New York City’s advantageous water connection through the Hudson River threatened Boston’s dominance as a historic trade center. Since the topography of the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts made construction of a canal infeasible, Boston turned to the emerging railroad technology for a share of the freight to and from the Midwestern United States. The Boston and Worcester Railroad was chartered in 1831 and construction began the next year. Stations and rail lines were built westward of Boston and would eventually reach the Berkshires and the Hudson Valley with three existing lines merging in 1867 as the Boston and Albany Railroad, becoming the longest and most expensive point-to-point railroad yet constructed in the United States. The B&A undertook a significant program of improvement and beautification in the 1880s and 1890s, when the railroad hired architect Alexander Rice Esty to design this building, the Boston passenger station which was completed in 1881, the year of Esty’s death. That same year, the B&A hired architect Henry Hobson Richardson to design a series of passenger stations, connecting suburban villages west of Boston to the city. This station was located on Kneeland Street and serviced passenger service from Boston until the new South Station, a consolidated train station of various lines, was completed in 1899. This station later became a freight and storage warehouse for the railroad until the 1950s when the building was razed for the Central Artery, signaling the death of train travel as we knew it for decades to come. The site of the former station has remained undeveloped since then.