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Milton Railroad Station
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West elevation and south profile, 2008
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| Location: | Milton, NY |
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| Nearest city: | Poughkeepsie |
| Area: | 0.61 acres (2,500 m2)[1] |
| Built: | 1883[1] |
| Architect: | Wilson Brothers & Co. |
| Architectural style: | Stick and other Late Victorian styles |
| Governing body: | Town of Marlborough |
| NRHP Reference#: | 07000873 |
| Added to NRHP: | August 28, 2007 |
The Milton Railroad Station is located on Dock Road at the Hudson River in Milton, New York, United States. It is a frame rectangular structure built for the West Shore Railroad in the late 19th century.
Service to the station ended after 76 years in the late 1950s, but it survives with the Highland Falls station as one of the few extant West Shore Railroad passenger stations. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 2007. It has been used for tastings by a local winery, and a community group is renovating it to serve the Town of Marlborough as a community center.
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The station is located where Dock Road comes down from downtown Milton to the river's edge, in the midst of a small former industrial area. A one-way dirt road, Old Indian Trail Road, leads to it from the south. A short, overgrown siding that once served the station and is considered a contributing resource to its NRHP listing is to the east. It is no longer connected to the still-active tracks between the station and the river.[1]
The building itself is a one-story frame 30-by-83-foot (9.1 by 25 m) rectangular building with a broad gable tin roof and overhanging eaves. Its board-and-batten siding is painted red. The northern two-thirds of the building, the oldest part, sits on a sandstone foundation, while the southern portion rests on masonry piers. Both areas have cellars.[1]
Inside most of the area was built for passenger operations. It has a waiting room with a fireplace and chimney, ticket office, two bathrooms and a cross hallway. The walls of the passenger area are decorated in beaded panelling and horizontal trim; the freight areas are less decorated. Some of the railway's communications equipment remains in the attic, and freight scales remain in that area.[1]
In one of the gables was a hallmark of the station's architects, a bargeboard with the scroll-sawn word "FREIGHT". Aesthetically, it reflects the Stick style common in the period of its construction, with its well-integrated forms and flamboyant detailing leaving the building's singular function apparent. The battens provide vertical scale and the window trim the horizontal.[1]
The station site had been actively used for transportation purposes by local Native Americans long before the first colonists arrived in the 17th century. Dock Road follows a ravine and stream down to the river, making it one of the few places where access to it from inland settlements was easy. When the future Town of Marlborough was settled around 1710, the station site was the boundary between its first two land grants, and some of the first houses were built nearby. A dock and related structures had been built by the end of the century.[1]
It continued to grow in the early half of the 19th century, becoming a regular steamboat port and the eastern end of the Farmer's Turnpike, which extended out to the foot of the Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner. A wheelbarrow factory at the site did a steady business. These interests resisted at first when the West Shore Railroad began acquiring property for their attempt to compete with the New York Central's Water Level Route across the river. Their litigation to stop it was dismissed in 1882, and the station, designed and built by Philadelphia architects Wilson Brothers & Co., opened the next year.[1]
The West Shore failed in its attempt to compete with the wealthy and powerful Central, and was absorbed into it after bankruptcy proceedings two years later, in 1885. The new owner expanded the station to its current size sometime around 1890 in order to handle freight shipments more efficiently. A decade or so later, the Central added a steam-boiler heating system and spruced up the interiors.[1]
In the 1950s air travel and the Interstate Highway System began offering alternatives to railroads, and the last passenger train stopped at Milton in 1959. Freight service likewise ended a few years later. A local winery bought the station and used it for tastings, putting in a steel stairway to the basement and removing the partitions that separated the station master and ticket agent's offices from the waiting room. In their place a wine bar was added.[1]
Near the end of the 20th century, in 1998, the winery sold the property to the town.[1] A local volunteer group, Friends of Milton Station, has been raising at least $100,000 to restore the station to its original appearance so the town can reuse it as a community center.[2][3] The town has been seeking grants from the state and other sources to cover the rest.[4]