S T U Y V E S A N T BY THE SHORE of the Hudson is a village called Stuyvesant Landing. We are now about 20 miles south of the state capital at Albany. The river is considerably narrower here than it was back in Beacon, and all that lies between Riverview Street and the water is the old New York Central mainline from New York to Chicago. BESIDE THE TRACKS stands the old New York Central Railroad Station. Built around 1880, this was one of a family of similar stations that included an identical one in Staatsburg, NY (which was demolished in 1911 to make way for a new station now gone), one in Cold Spring, and two slightly larger still active ones in Peekskill and in Hudson. In the mid-1950s, as the railroad began looking for ways to save money, the station at Stuyvesant Falls was closed. It has remained abandoned ever since. TODAY the old railroad station at Stuyvesant Landing has become one of those rare ruins that survive long enough to have lost all of its windows to caulk deterioration. A stenciled note marks the date of the station's last paint-job: September, 1946. I paid my visit some 53 years later, at the beginning of January, 1999. It was a bitterly cold day, made all the colder by a strong wind coming off the river.
AFTER TAKING a few photos, I went across the street to grab some lunch at George's Deli. He was out of Roast Beef, so I had a Turkey sandwich instead. Above the door was a restoration of the old station beneath which the words "Historic Symbol of Progress to Serve Again" were painted. "That the station?" I asked the proprietor, who that day sported a violet baseball cap with the word "STUYVESANT" sewn across the front.
"YUP," he answered with a sigh. He went-on to tell a story leading from years of neglect to acquisition by the town of Stuyvesant to recent efforts taken to shore the place up. "I'd love to open a restaurant in there," he said, but when asked if he thought it would ever happen, his answer was a shruggish "nope."
I FINISHED my sandwich, (which by the way was excellent), bid farewell, and went out just in time to get a shot of a southbound Amtrak train, streaking headlong past the station at something around 80 miles per hour. In an hour and a half it will be in New York. Is this little building doomed? Time will tell. It's been abandoned now for nearly fifty years. We should know soon. Good luck, Stuyvesant Station. UPDATE: Since 1998, extensive stabilization work has been carried out on the station, sealing it from the elements. Though much remains to be done, this work has ensured the building's survival for some time to come. The building has also been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. © T.E. Rinaldi, 2006
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