Broad Street Station

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm having trouble uploading the photographs; in the meantime, please enjoy my long, boring word salad about Broad Street Station.

(Broad Street Station, 1970)

(Science Museum of Virginia, 2015)

Site Name: Formerly Union Station of Richmond, commonly known as “Broad Street Station”, now the Science Museum of Virginia

Construction Beginning: January 6, 1917

Construction Reason: When passenger traffic crowded the station’s predecessors, the Byrd and Elba Stations, the larger passenger trains needed to be rerouted. The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad (RF&P) and the Richmond and Petersburg Railway (R&P) decided to build a new station on the west end to serve that purpose.

Site History: Broad Street Station was a union station, meaning that it served multiple railroad companies: namely the RF&P and the R&P. The station first opened in 1919. In 1920, there were about 76 registered motor passenger vehicles for every 1,000 Americans, compared with about 485 vehicles in 1997. The average mileage on a motor vehicle in 1920 was 5,152 miles; by 1997, this had more than doubled to 12,324 miles. The observable differences between these two photographs reflect a change that coordinated with the increasing popularity, acceptance, and efficiency of consumer automobiles: the decline of the railroads as the quickest, most commonplace means of long-distance travel.

More relevantly, the Broad Street Station served as the southern terminus (end) of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad (RF&P), historically, from 1836, through the Civil War, and into the 20^th century, one of the most important channels through which people and products moved between the North and the South. At a time when there was not even one in ten Americans to an automobile, any Richmonder who had needed to go to Baltimore would likely have gone through this building. At its height during WWII, this station saw on average fifty-seven trains every day.

Prior to the station’s construction, the lot was essentially an empty field once used as the official grounds for the State Fair. In 1904, the RF&P bought it and soon thereafter established it as the site of the Hermitage Country Club, intending to eventually develop the area as a residential neighborhood, which for some reason or another never came into existence.

John Russell Pope, a renowned American architect, won an international contest in 1913 to design a new union station for the RF&P and the R&P in Richmond, Virginia. This of course was the one at Broad Street. Construction took exactly two years and about three million dollars, six months behind anticipations and nearly two million dollars over budget. Onlookers and newspapers noted the station’s unconventional layout. It had no large train shed, and the rail platforms were not level with the passenger waiting area. Instead, the design employed a lowered area for the trains to rest while passengers came down on inclined walkways from a “long, narrow concourse” onto shaded ground platforms beside the train cars. One can still see the black, column-supported platform coverings protruding out from the sides of the museum today. Another unusual feature of the layout was the “unique high speed (30mph) ‘oblong loop track,’” which allowed trains to receive passengers on the west side of the circuit and cargo on the east as well as enter from the north end, be serviced, and then exit northward onto the same line from whence they came.

After the Second World War, passenger railroad business began to decline, with the growth of highway system and the rise of the family car providing Americans with a more convenient means of long distance travel and taking up more and more space around the area. In 1958, Broad Street Station took on the last of Main Street Station’s Seaboard passenger trains. In 1972, Amtrak, which had taken over Richmond’s remaining passenger trains the year before, rerouted its central Virginia passenger rail traffic to a station by Staples Mill Road in Henrico County. The last passenger train from Broad Street Station left in November of 1975.

The following year, the site was sold to the State of Virginia, which planned to tear it down in favor of using the site for an office park. In 1976, however, the Science Museum was allowed to use the main building, and it has since become the permanent home for the exhibits.

Area History: Broad Street has long been one of Richmond’s busiest thoroughfares. Even back in 1896 it was lined with buildings, and one could see trolley cars rolling down the way. It was therefore a logical choice to build one of Richmond’s major stations there as it would be easily available to the public.

How the Site Has Changed: The tracks of the loop were taken up to make room for streets and buildings such as the DMV headquarters. Behind the museum is the very new training facility of the Washington Redskins.

Reflection: It is easier for me to relate now to understand what provoked progressives to seek an end to railroad trusts and monopolies: the railroads were a part of most Americans’ everyday lives in one way or another. I also learned much about land allocation. As it turns out, Richmond proved to be a city it was very difficult to set up railroad lines in because of all the preexisting structures and the peculiar geographic layout.

Sources:

National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. "Broad Street Station." Discover our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary. Accessed April 15, 2015. http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/richmond/BroadStreetStation.html.

Richmond Railroad Museum. Last modified February 2, 2015. Accessed April 10, 2015. http://richmondrailroadmuseum.org/.

Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Va.). "Union Station Proves Big Saving for Public."          February 8, 1919. Accessed March 30, 2015.      http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045389/1919-02-08/ed-1/seq-6/.

United States Dept. of the Interior National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form, Doc. No. 127.226 (1971). Accessed April 15, 2015. http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/Richmond/127-0226_Broad_Street_Station_1972_Final_Nomination.pdf.