FREE Union Station print for paid subscribers
Bringing Pittsfield history to life
Long-time subscriber Lyn Horvath has donated a set of signed prints or her original painting of Pittsfield’s Union Station. They are available as a thank-you gift to paid subscribers to Train Time. The full image can be seen below. The prints are in full color on heavy stock, 11x17 inches.
They can be picked up in Great Barrington, as can our bumperstickers, also available to paid subscribers.
An article in the Berkshire Eagle called Union Station a “Beaux Arts Wonder”:
The nearly 18,000-square-foot station has been described as a beautifully designed Beaux Arts structure made of brick and white terra cotta trim. The interior included both white and green marble, a mosaic-tiled floor with the city seal, a polished terrazzo ceiling with picturesque skylights, and walls with large arched windows providing natural lighting to highlight the facility's artistic features.
When it opened in 1914, the station was state of the art with electric lighting, a controlled heating system, an intercom for announcing trains and a passenger-convenient restaurant.
Even in the 1950s the interior furnishings still included the original shiny curved wooden benches graced by ornate globed lights, and in the center stood a multisided information counter with a towering clock. From the West Street entrance, the newsstand was located on the right side and the ticket and Railway Express Agency windows were on the left side. To reach the trains you would go down a short tunnel-like hallway on the right rear side and ascend one of the stairways to get to the outdoor platforms. . . .
City Councilman (and later state Representative) Joseph Scelsi had tried to get the Union Station restored. But in the end urban renewal won a battle over his valiant efforts. Union Station was razed in 1968 and today not much remains of the once grand Beaux Arts edifice. Most of the metal, marble and other materials were recycled elsewhere or went to the landfill. Souvenir hunters managed to save some pieces and artifacts of the station.
That’s not the only damage done during the period of so-called urban renewal.” Pittsfield, like many cities and towns across the country, needs reconfiguring and until January it looks as though some important changes might be made:
[In January 2025,] “the U.S. Department of Transportation Reconnecting Communities program awarded the city $1.6 million in federal grant money to study how it can undo the damage caused by that urban renewal project. Specifically, the study will look at what happens if the Center Street highway that cuts off downtown from the city's largest Black neighborhood is removed.
And, if by doing so, could Pittsfield create a true neighborhood of homes, small businesses, and at the same time address decades of harm created by the redlining maps that effectively segregated the city?
Read the story in the Berkshire Eagle: “What would happen if the Center Street highway was removed in Pittsfield? The city is expected to get $1.6 million for a study that will find out.” The Eagle doesn’t offer gift links to subscribers, unfortunately.
Another article in the Eagle provides details about what the West Side was like before the highway cut it off from the rest of the city - and made getting to public transit and the trains much more difficult: “50 years after urban renewal leveled parts of Pittsfield's West Side, student architects are imagining how the land can have 'purpose' again.” Here’s a bit from that story:
Fifty years ago, the West Side of Pittsfield was a neighborhood of people sitting on their porches.
You could have walked through streets of family houses, stone buildings and elm trees, restaurants and small shops with apartments above, says Tessa Kelly, an architect and Pittsfield native.
You could have met a friend at a Polish market or at the Hotel Pickwick, stopped in at a barber shop or rummaged for auto parts and caught a train to New York from the Union Station made of Berkshire marble [emphasis added].
Or more accurately — exactly 50 years ago, you would have seen the space where they had been. Fifty years ago last fall, Kelly says, in 1973, urban renewal demolitions leveled more than 86 acres of land and 200 structures in and around downtown.
One of the buildings we lost was the Union Station. Imagine if Pittsfield still had this gem at its center instead of the Intermodal Center! The station itself would be an attraction, like Grand Central Terminal.
We have a lot of reimagining to do, and then a lot of rebuilding. You can help by sharing Train Time with your friends, neighbors, colleagues, and town officials.
Here’s a video I took in Pittsfield a couple of weeks ago for someone who had never been there. You can see some of the grand old buildings that remain near the center.
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