Buffalo Central Terminal

Beacon at mile 435.9–2 Dedication to Dethronement
Trains Magazine October 1985
Garnet R. Cousins

Saturday, June 22, 1929, was bright and sunny in Buffalo, a perfect day for a celebration, the dedication of the Central Terminal. Houses and stores in the neighborhood surrounding the Terminal were bedecked with a Fourth of July-like blaze of bunting and flags. At 8 a.m. the trucks of caterers and florists began arriving. They were soon joined by 50 New York Central policemen. By 10 that morning, 55 Buffalo policemen had joined them to control the huge crowd. A constant flow of automobiles arrived with notables and guests for the noon luncheon for 2200 people, hosted by the Chamber of Commerce and catered by the Statler and Buffalo hotels, the largest such event ever held in the city. Four radio stations together with newsreel photographers augmented the newspaper coverage of the event.

The guests seated at hundreds of tables set up in the passenger concourse included many officials of the Buffalo & Susquehanna, Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh, Canadian National, Erie, Nickel Plate, and Pennsylvania railroads as well as the host road, NYC (PRR President William Wallace Atterbury, scheduled to speak on behalf of all American railroads, cancelled at the 11th hour, appointing in his place a vice president, T. W. Hulme. But the Pennsy placed an advertisement in the Buffalo Courier Express congratulating its rival on the new facility); Buffalo Mayor Francis X. Schwab; and leaders of the state and local government, commerce, and industry; and the Grade Crossing and Terminal Commission. Quietly seated at the long speaker’s table, strangely silent, taking it all in, were the architects, Alfred Fellheimer and Steward Wagner.

Two guests exchanged views. J. M. White, veteran ticket agent at the old NYC station in Cleveland, said, “Buffalo’s new terminal goes into commission first, but it will have less than a one year start over our immense new station at Cleveland, for that will be operating by January 1st, 1930. In fact, our terminal tower or office building has
been in commission nearly a year.”

Earl Blood, the Terminal’s ticket agent, replied, “Cleveland, like Buffalo, waited a good many years for its terminal, and now that we both have what we want, we veterans have not served and waited all these years in vain.”

At 11:45 a chorus led the singing of “America,” followed by the invocation and more singing. The Avis Band composed of NYC shop employees from Avis, Pa., provided background music during the delectable meal of boneless chicken breast. (Alas, the locomotive shops in Avis would close in July 1931.)

After the meal, the speechmaking began. Toastmaster Samuel Botsford of the Chamber of Commerce opened by making light of a sore subject. He said a comedian at a local theater had joked that the new station was so far east of downtown that it served both Buffalo and Rochester. He then set the tone of the many speeches that followed by
adding that the Terminal was really at the center of metropolitan Buffalo.

William H. Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the Grade Crossing and Terminal Commission, gave the first address, and Sir Henry Thornton, founding president of the Canadian National, “spoke briefly.” Mayor Schwab spoke. Finally, Central President Patrick E. Crowley arose to the cheers and waving napkins of the hometown crowd, giving a short speech
on the long history of station development, thanking all who had contributed to the project.

Then the crowd, headed by Crowley and other officials, marched behind the Avis Band down to the platforms to witness the 2:10 p.m. departure of the eastbound. Empire State Express. The NYC president shook hands and chatted with Engineer William Golding of Buffalo; Fireman Ray Boland of Kenmore, N.Y; and the conductor. Crowley had invited veteran Paddy Kern to be at the throttle, but the 75-year-old engineer whose Empire experience dated from 1892, was in the hospital recuperating from a leg amputation and had to decline. Another famous Central engineer, Charlie Hogan, now a manager of shop labor, was among the spectators. He had driven the first Empire into Buffalo in 1891, and in 1893 operated 4-4-0 999 at a reported 112.5 mph.

As Crowley and the engineer of Hudson 5250 signed autographs, a Fokker airplane circled overhead. Piloted by Mary Daly, the craft had escorted the train up from the Exchange Street Station, an event which presaged the ominous Ford Tri-Motor in the night sky above the Terminal in Walter L. Greene’s 1930 NYC calendar. At 2:10 p.m., the Express left the station (one newspaper reported that it had arrived empty and had to return to Exchange Street after the ceremonies to pick up passengers before heading east). Its appearance had been for celebration purposes; revenue operation of the Terminal would not begin until midnight.

The crowd then followed the ever-present Avis Band back to the station, exiting onto the plaza where a bunting draped platform had been set. The flag was raised as the band played the “Star Spangled Banner.” After more speeches, Crowley gave a gold station key to Thomas Hanrahan of the Chamber of Commerce, and Mayor Schwab gave
Crowley a key to the city. Then the officials returned inside where the mayor unveiled a bronze plaque bearing his name and those of the Grade Crossing and Terminal Station Commission. Absent were the names of the architects and Crowley.

At 3:30 p.m., the station was finally opened for public inspection, and thousands walked through during the afternoon and evening. And a population of 1500 officials and employees (out of a total NYC Buffalo employment of 7895 in 1929) began to occupy the site.

At midnight, 200 daily trains began using the Terminal. (The NYC ran a total of 91,420 passenger trains in and out of Buffalo in 1929.) Something of the quality of Central’s business may be gauged by the array of all-Pullman trains serving the new Terminal: New England Wolverine, Niagara, Berkshire, Southwestern Limited, Ohio State Limited, Wolverine, Lake Shore Limited, Cleveland Limited, Advance 20th Century Limited, 20th Century Limited, Detroiter, North Shore Limited, Iroquois, and Commodore Vanderbilt!

Item: Pullmans originated in Buffalo for Albany, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Miami, Montreal, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, St. Petersburg, and Toledo!

The Ford Tri-Motor circling over the Terminal in Walter Greene’s 1930 NYC calendar became more than symbolism for Buffalonians who had to get to California in a hurry. They could leave town at 8:55 a.m. on a Saturday aboard the Iroquois and be in Los Angeles at 8 p.m. Sunday by training to Kansas City (either Alton or Santa Fe beyond Chicago) and flying from there to the coast.

But several trains to and from the east (including the Empire State Express) as well as Niagara Falls trains and schedules of the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo continued to originate and terminate at Exchange Street Station.

This was clearly an effort by the Central to ameliorate irate feelings over its failure to construct a new downtown station as promised back in 1925. The NYC’s annual reports had continually assured the city the matter was under study, as in 1926: “Negotiations are progressing with the City of Buffalo for a downtown station in the vicinity of Main and Washington Streets and for the removal of the existing tracks from the surface of the Terrace and Church Street by relocation of the company’s roadway in the abandoned Erie Canal bed.”

The Buffalo Evening News caustically stated that “Of course, we are not entirely through with the talk, for the downtown station problem is still to be settled. We hope that the period of talk is about at an end.”

NYC’s true feelings about a downtown station were revealed by the engineer in charge of the Central Terminal project, William F. Jordan: “I might say that there will be a downtown station that will take care of commuters. Its location has not been determined, but Buffalo has little of that kind of business, and it is growing less and less. . . ” By the early 1930’s, major trains had ceased to use Exchange Street; it served only daily commuters.

Central Terminal was given the status of a union station to some extent by the presence of the Pennsylvania, which fielded trains to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Washington. In January 1930 its service out of Central Terminal included through sleepers to Atlantic City, Miami, Tampa, and St. Petersburg, though not always on a daily basis.

Because of the manner in which PRR tracks intersected the NYC main line, back-up movements were necessary. Inbound PRR trains were headed northwest, joining the NYC at Emslie Street, about 1 1/4 miles southwest of the Terminal. From there they backed in. Outbound PRR trains backed out of the Terminal when starting their journeys.

Pennsy used its own coach yard at Babcock and Clinton Streets until 1933, after which NYC facilities were used. PRR engines were serviced at its own engine terminal in Ebenezer, 6.7 miles southeast of the Terminal.

Less than four months after it had opened for business, Buffalo Central Terminal was beclouded by the October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday stock market crash. The high hopes and bright projections which had surrounded the New York Central’s expansive station building program during the 1920’s and early 1930’s soon evaporated. Although not
apparent at first, the system had overbuilt.

Between 1929 and 1933, operating revenues of New York Central fell 52 per cent and net skidded almost 80 per cent. In the same period, annual passenger revenues declined from $131 million to $53.2 million. The Central had installed 1085 passenger-train cars excluding Pullmans during 1926-1930 but would buy only 79 during 1931-
1939.

As though a reflection of the times, two old Buffalo stations, proud relics of the 19th century, were closed and demolished-Exchange Street on November 13, 1935 (but platforms and tracks remained for NYC and PRR commuter trains); and the Erie Station December 11, 1936 (its trains had switched to the Lehigh Valley station August 4, 1935).

The budding aircraft industry introduced a greater awareness of aerodynamic principles and, in the spirit of the times, NYC became the first American railroad to streamline a steam locomotive-Hudson No.5344, the Commodore Vanderbilt, in 1934. A completely new streamlined 20th Century Limited (though not serving Terminal passengers-the Century ran through without receiving or discharging passengers) followed in 1938. Buffalo’s own premier train, the Empire State Express, was later re-equipped with Budd-built stainless-steel cars, but its debut–on December 7, 1941-was naturally eclipsed by Pearl Harbor.

Central, whose intercity passenger traffic had held up better than that of most big roads and even returned a small profit under the ICC formula of cost allocations, took the huge passenger loadings of World War II in stride. In contrast to the trains in Central Terminal when it was new, those of the war years mingled box car-Iike troop sleepers with streamlined all-room gray Pullmans, and the durable Hudsons were assisted by elephant-eared L-4 Mohawks and, by war’s end, the great Niagara 4-8-4. The coach rider enjoyed his own deluxe train, the Pacemaker, and all-Pullman consists dwindled in
number.

The wartime crowds claimed a casualty. The stuffed buffalo in the passenger concourse began to suffer from baldness as servicemen in search of souvenirs and good luck charms took portions of his fur, and he was replaced by a plastic buffalo in July 1945-sign of a coming age.

Diselization of passenger service and a record purchase of 720 streamlined cars could not shield New York Central from the impact of the Interstate Highway System and jet aircraft.

But the station shone on October 18, 1948, when Governor Thomas E. Dewey paid a presidential campaign call. When his 16-car train arrived, he was rushed down the train concourse and up the stairs to the balcony over the parcel checkroom at the east end of the passenger concourse. From there he looked out at a crowd estimated between 10,000 and 12,000 people-nearly six times the number who attended the Terminal’s opening day. He spoke off the cuff, opening by saying he had been in the station many times and had often enjoyed the wheat cakes served in its restaurant. Then he delivered a volley of critical remarks about the Truman Administration. (Dewey, like his opponent, was no novice to railroading; he had helped dedicate the prototype Niagara, No.6000, at Alco’s Schenectady Works.)

In the winter of 1949-24 years after being promised in the contract of 1925 between New York Central and the Grade Crossing and Terminal station Commission-the construction of a downtown station was begun. The project involved abandonment of the Terrace Station and relocation of downtown tracks in the bed of the old Erie Canal. Part of the reason for revival of the idea was that the State Department of Public Works included it in a $25 million program involving a high-Ievel bridge in the downtown Buffalo portion of the new New York Thruway. The railroad portion of the work came to $7 million, of which $125,000 was for the new Exchange Street Station. Costs borne by the Central were minuscule. The new station was opened August 2, 1952, when Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo train 372 arrived from Toronto at 12:59 p.m., with 10 cars in charge of an almost-new Canadian Pacific 4-6-2. The small, simple, one-story brick structure initially accommodated 21 trains a day. The work of removing the hated, grade-level Terrace tracks, synonymous with vehicular traffic delays 33 times a day, was begun on the same day; and the 72-year-old, sodden, clapboard Terrace station was razed by September 17, 1952.

The irony was that these improvements were part of a highway project, the New York Thruway, which would, when completed in 1955, help drive down the number of daily passenger trains at Central Terminal well below the 99 of 1953, itself a figure less than half the traffic of 1929.

An era passed on March 23, 1954, with the departure of the last regularly scheduled steam passenger train at the Terminal, Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo train 377 behind 4-6-4 No.501.

Robert R. Young’s successful proxy fight of 1954 for control of New York Central, and his appointment of Alfred E. Perlman of the Rio Grande as Central’s president, had an important consequence for Buffalo Central Terminal. The NYC was a very ill patient; Perlman was its skilled, dispassionate surgeon. His vision of a leaner, more agile, competitive system clashed with the passenger orientation of the past that caused the station’s construction. The Young-led Central called it a “ghost city” and a “white elephant”; Perlman labeled it a “mausoleum.” In 1956, 406 NYC stations, including Buffalo’s, were put up for sale; only 50 sold.

Numerous inquiries were received from speculators. Central Terminal’s annual cost of $180,000 in taxes and $120,000 in maintenance did not encourage buyers. But at an asking price of about $1 million, the structure was virtually a gift.

On August 7, 1959, Florida-based Buffprop Enterprises, Inc., signed a 25-year lease with option to buy, planning to convert the plaza into a shopping center and renovate the tower for offices. NYC retained and reconfigured the train concourse and a corridor-like section along the east end of the passenger concourse for the remaining 55 daily passenger trains. A small ticket office and baggage facility was built along the east wall of the train concourse, and 11 benches were moved in. In effect, a long, narrow station was created within the old station.

Buffprop modernized part of the 6th floor of the tower as a demonstration model, then ran out of capital and enthusiasm, defaulting in September 1960. NYC had its unwanted terminal back.

The bad news continued unabated. Razing of the landmark Lehigh Valley Terminal at Main and Scott Streets, abandoned in 1952, was begun August 30, 1960, to make way for a state office building. In November 1960, the State Service Commission criticized NYC for erecting a toll gate at the entrance to the plaza, which forced drivers who were merely dropping off passengers at the terminal entrance to pay for doing so; by April 1961, station employees, who had never had adequate parking, were threatening to make the tolls a strike issue. In 1962, the 10-year-old Exchange Street Station was closed and the Lackawanna Terminal abandoned. Exploring all options to unload its ruggedly built, aging stations, NYC sent a representative to the July 1964 convention of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel but found that the cost of demolition usually exceeded the sale price.

In March 1965, a small segment of the east end of the passenger concourse was walled off, making the “station within a station” begun in 1959 a self contained entity, masking the empyrean spaces of old. Stairway access to the platforms below was shut off, with both departing and arriving passengers required to use the ramps, which received additional doors to shut off drafts. The men’s restroom was converted into both men’s and women’s restrooms. Mercury vapor lighting was installed over the platforms. Traffic declined to 22 trains a day.

In 1966, the Pullman service building, ice house, and coach shop were razed to cut taxes and maintenance. In January 1967, NYC set up a small booth on the west side of the train concourse as a hospitality booth for soldiers leaving for Vietnam; 33 men en route to Fort Dix, N.J., were the first to use it.

New York Central and Pennsylvania merged into Penn Central in 1968, only to declare bankruptcy in June 1970, ending a depressing decade on a bitter note.

The 1970’s introduced Buffalo to railroading in shades of red, white, and blue. On May 1, 1971, Amtrak rescued the remains of intercity rail passenger service. Amtrak and the Penn Central-TH&B-Canadian Pacific Budd-car connection to Toronto continued to use the near-empty Terminal. In 1972, only two daily Buffalo-New York trains were scheduled, but the Empire Service corridor grew back in schedule frequency, and in 1974, service was reinstated to Detroit. The Chicago-New York Lake Shore came and went during 1971-1972 as a state-subsidized operation, then resounded with a bang in October 1975 to become a successful Amtrak eastern intercity train. On April 1, 1976, the railroad assets of Penn Central and other Eastern bankrupts were conveyed to Conrail.

There was a last hurrah for the Terminal on an evening in May 1978 when photographer Ken Kraemer, assisted by Jim Van Brocklin, John Mariott and Conrail custodian Joe Duncan, set out to duplicate on film Walter Greene’s 1930 calendar painting, albeit with a Turboliner (arriving at 8:40 p.m. as Afitrak 73, the Empire State Express, in lieu of the long-gone Centuries). After opening the shutter on his tripod-mounted camera (using EH-120 Ektachrome film, ASA 160), Kraemer signaled from the ground with a flash-light and his associates raced up six flights of stairs to the tower, firing off No.50 flashbulbs as they climbed. “The moon is real,” he added.

In late 1978, Amtrak reopened Exchange Street Station after a $6 million program to restore service to Niagara Falls. The carrier operates four daily trains each way through Buffalo–the Boston/New York-Chicago Lake Shore Limited (which skips Exchange Street); the New York-Toronto Maple Leaf; and the New York-Niagara Falls Empire State Express and Niagara Rainbow. Ownership of Central Terminal remained with Penn Central (through a subsidiary, the Owasco River Railway), which reorganized as a nonrail entity.

After several false starts, Central Terminal, offered at $1.2 million, was finally sold-in July 1979 to local businessman Anthony Fedele and Galesi Realty of Paterson, N.J., for $75,000! They planned a hotel/recreational/civic complex. But the tenants had left (Conrail the month before to offices in the downtown National Gypsum building) or were departing (Amtrak on October 28 to Depew Station in Cheektowaga to the east). Fifty years, 4 months, and 5 days after it opened, the Terminal was without passenger trains.

In 1980, Central Terminal became the last of its breed in Buffalo as the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western station was demolished. But the Terminal enjoyed a touch of fame in March 1982 as scenes were shot there for the movie Best Friends, starring Bert Reynolds and Goldie Hawn.

In the spring of 1982, shock waves tore through its framework as workers rent a gap in its train concourse where it joined the main station to accommodate high, wide loads on two adjacent freight tracks. Cincinnati Union Terminal, a sister station, lost its entire train concourse for a similar reason, to accommodate a piggyback terminal. The wound left a vacuous opening in what once was the main artery of pedestrian travel between station and trains.

In August 1983 moviemakers returned to shoot scenes for The Natural as Robert Redford and a cast of more than 40 extras, all in 1920’s attire, worked their magic.

Reality followed hard on the heels of fantasy. In November the Terminal came close to being placed on the auction block in a sale for taxes, but foreclosure was averted when owner Fedele paid $10,200 toward a tax dent of $142,128. A $2000-per-month payment schedule was worked out by city officials anxious to see ownership remain in the hands of someone with plans rather than face abandonment or city ownership. Indeed, it would have been difficult to find another so emotionally attached to the building, as Fedele had even constructed an apartment home overlooking the passenger concourse.

In October 1984 the Terminal was placed on state and national Registers of Historic Places, increasing chances for tax breaks and complicating any efforts at demolition. Grin Lehman, state commissioner of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation recognized the complex as “architecturally significant in New York State as a monumental example of Art Deco style civic structure.” The new status gave heart to owner Fedele who earlier in the year had been awarded a 1984 Preservation Plate award by the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier for his estimated $1.2 million clean-up effort.

Buffalo Central Terminal stands its ground today, the newest, largest, and last structure of its genre in the city, a monument to a railroad age that died. In a culture that tends to measure value strictly by the bottom line, it is easy to scoff at the station as a worn-out relic, a discarded husk divided too long from its original purpose. Some values, however, transcend dollars and cents. The big building is an archaeological object, a symbol and a guide to a monumental phase in our industrial/ transportation history, the product of a big-hearted flirtation with grandeur in what may turn out to be our never-again-equaled golden age.

In the spirit of those times, the New York Central overbuilt, constructing the tallest wholly owned station on its system. Rosseate but naive perceptions of urban growth placed the building too far from the central city. Critics of architecture may complain of its heaviness and lack of unity and of the long distances patrons had to walk. But how rare Central Terminal looks today with so few of its kind remaining.

With no museums to protect it, architecture as art is the toy of nature and time. When the accolades and need have waned, it must pathetically endure weather, decay, and abuse. Buffalo Central Terminal is art as well as archaeology” Our concern for where we have been, beyond the superficial, beyond nostalgia, is the only “museum” and hope it has.