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Broad Street Station around the time of its completion
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The station during construction
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Passengers travel through the station during its heyday.
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An aerial view of the station and its surroundings
We do it for New Year’s and rocket launches.
“People like to count down,” says the Science Museum of Virginia’s Jennifer Guild, “and this will be the exact time a century ago that the first train rolled out of Broad Street Station.”
That moment came at 1:07 p.m., Jan. 6, 1919, and that anticipation and excitement will be among the festivities on Sunday that starts a yearlong celebration and commemoration of both the distinctive domed building designed by John Russell Pope and the history of the institution that began its tentative steps there in 1976.
Sunday’s Centennial Celebration features a variety of events for the whole family, including guided walking tours of the building and the 1919 Car O-N-E (pronounced Oh-N-Ee), a Pullman tricked out for the luxury needs of the railroad executive. Visitors possessing a vintage memory may record their memories of Broad Street Station.
Throughout January, the museum's free Lunch Break Science lecture series, noon to 1 p.m., features talks highlighting various aspects of the station’s history. Coming up Jan. 9: “The Design and Construction of Broad Street Station,” given by Bryan Clark Green, director of historic preservation at Commonwealth Architects, and Jan. 16, “Science and Politics: Reflective and Prospective Observations of the RF&P Railroad,” presented by Dick Beadles, former president of the RF&P Railroad.
Following the lectures, the museum will collect oral histories from guests about their experiences at Broad Street Station. Those wishing to share their stories in person may do so during on Wednesday afternoons by calling 804-864-1400. The museum will add the recordings to its archives.
Also during January, the giant-screen film “Rocky Mountain Express” takes viewers through the adventure of building the nation’s first transcontinental railway.
Concurrent to this event is the Branch House (today’s Branch Museum of Architecture and Design) centennial, the architecture of which came from Pope’s offices as well. The station is visible from the house's second-floor Georgian parlor. A lecture series begins there Jan. 10.
One might grouse about how the Pulse bus line disrupted Broad Street and maybe doesn’t go and do everything one needs it to, but listen to this: From 1836 until around 1880, the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad (RF&P) ran trains down the middle of Broad, from a station at Eighth Street until taking a bend north at Hancock. The noise, danger and fatalities eventually caused the creation of “Elba Station” at Belvidere and Pine streets. After 1888, the privately operated electric streetcars ran up Broad and around town.
Some three decades passed, and a Byrd and Seventh street station proved inadequate for longer trains operated by the RF&P and the Richmond & Petersburg (the later Atlantic Coast Line). The companies unveiled joint plans to create a station uniting the railroads in one suitable location. This officially became known as Union Station, though colloquially we refer to it as Broad Street Station, which since 1976 has housed the Science Museum of Virginia.
Guild explains, “They wanted to build their station not too far out of town so that people wouldn’t feel like they wouldn’t have time to get downtown or see the sites if they were stopping over for a few hours. But they didn’t want it too close in to cause traffic problems.”
The RF&P in 1904 purchased the state fair grounds on Boulevard and also developed the Hermitage Country Club to lure city recreation-seeking residents by rail. Plans were to create a neighborhood served by the “Hermitage Station.”
Nearby was the Putney Shoe Factory (the building, though modified, remains), the Sauer’s spice plant, the Jenkins Bookbindery (where Richmond magazine has its offices), and nearby breweries and meatpacking plants. Architect D. Wiley Anderson sought to straddle Broad and Boulevard with an elaborate “Gateway of the South.” The trolleys operated here, too, and the station’s opening publicity touted the station’s accessibility using the Broad and Main, Broad and 25th, Westhampton, and Belmont Avenue lines.
The First World War that intervened scotched both Wiley’s gateway and delayed the station construction. Harry Frazier, the chief consulting engineer retained by the railroads, gave instruction for the building of innovative railyard and connecting track systems.
Broad Street Station altered the cityscape through prompting the construction of the William Byrd Hotel, the Capitol Theatre, restaurants and other service businesses, including shoe repair, barbers, and dry cleaning.
Broad Street became one of the South’s busiest stations. At the height of World War II, on April 22, 1943, 33,324 passengers either arrived or departed. The station handled 55 trains a day.
The station ran 24 hours a day. “At its height, a train left the station approximately every 14 minutes,” Guild says, “and these weren’t just passenger trains but also freight and for the U.S. postal service.”
Among the tens of thousands of travelers, some important guests included Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower and Elvis Presley.
The public and government relationship with mass transit changed. Amtrak took over passenger transportation in 1971 and moved its administrative offices out of the building. The last train pulled away on Nov. 15, 1975. The state moved to demolish the building for an office park, but supporters of the old station intervened and within six months established a foothold exhibition in the cavernous old structure.
Come, all you rounders, to the museum if you want to hear the rest of the story.
Admission to the Science Museum of Virginia's Centennial Celebration, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 6, is $15 for adults, $13.50 for youth and seniors, and $10 for preschoolers between the ages of 3 and 5. Museum members and children 2 and under are admitted free. Dr. Bryan Clark Green, Director of Historic Preservation at Commonwealth Architects, will give architectural walking tours of the building at 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30 p.m.
