President Street Station

The President Street Station in Baltimore, Maryland, is a former train station and railroad terminal. Built in 1849 and opened in February 1850, the station saw some of the earliest bloodshed of the American Civil War (1861-1865), and was an important rail link during the conflict. It is the oldest surviving big-city railroad terminal in the United States.

For the New York City Subway station, see President Street (IRT Nostrand Avenue Line).
President Street Station
An 1856 illustration of President Street Station in Baltimore
LocationPresident Street at Fleet Street (southeast corner)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Coordinates39°17′2.4″N 76°36′8.8″W
Arealess than one acre
Built1849 (1849)
ArchitectParker, George A.; Isaac Ridgeway Trimble; Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad
Architectural styleMid 19th Century Revival, Italianate, Greek Revival
Restored1996-1997
NRHP reference No.92001229[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHPSeptember 10, 1992
Designated BCL2009

In 1997, a preservation campaign and renovation project was completed, enabling the station to be operated as Baltimore Civil War Museum.

History

19th century
President Street Station and its eastern yards and shops of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad twenty years after construction, in 1869

The Baltimore and Port Deposit Rail Road (B&PD), founded in 1832, completed a rail line from Baltimore to the western shore of the Susquehanna River in 1837.[2]: 32  [3]: 489  The railroad's Baltimore terminus was on the east side of the basin now known as the Inner Harbor at the southern end of President Street.

The B&PD exchanged freight cars with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the oldest railroad line in the country, established in 1827, which had built a track along Pratt Street, to the eastern basin harbor area from its original Mount Clare depot on the western side of the central business district.[2]: 31–2 [4]: 144 

The B&PD and its merger successor company, the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (PW&B), transferred passengers to the B&O's first downtown depot at East Pratt and South Charles streets by a horse-drawn car on B&O's connecting track. (The Baltimore City Council prohibited the operation of locomotives on this track for reasons of frightening horses and fears of fires).[2]: 32  By 1838, the PW&B was carrying passengers from further northeast through Philadelphia to Baltimore, where they could transfer to the B&O and continue west to Ohio or by a new branch line further south to the national capital at Washington, D.C.[5]

The PW&B started building its own station at the southwestern corner of President Street with Canton Avenue with train yards, including a roundhouse, shops and freight warehouses of about six square city blocks, extending east along Canton Avenue, later renamed Fleet Street.[6]: 3  The Greek Revival-style station opened on February 18, 1850.[7][8]

In addition to the brick head house with a distinctive arched roof, the original station also had a 208 feet (63 m) long barrel vaulted train shed over the tracks.[9] The PW&B added a similarly styled freight house, adjacent to the south of the passenger station, in 1852.[6][10]

American Civil War

On February 23, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln, traveling in secret after abandoning his inauguration whistle stop train tour, transferred from the President Street Station to Camden Station in order to thwart the Baltimore Plot assassination attempt.[11][12][13][14]

The station was involved in the Baltimore riot of 1861, as Massachusetts state militia troops bound for Washington, D.C. were being pulled in several connecting horse cars and later marching to the B&O Camden Station, ten blocks west and were attacked by an angry mob of Southern and Confederate sympathizers, with a large number of civilians and four soldiers killed and many people wounded in the ensuing melee.[9][15][16] On Friday, April 19, 1861, Baltimore Southern sympathizers attacked the passing 6th Massachusetts infantry regiment of the state militia and the "Washington Brigade" of Philadelphia from the Pennsylvania state militia. Both units were heading to Washington to reinforce defenses in response to the requests for troops in his proclamation declaring the existence of an insurrection by President Lincoln after the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in South Carolina by newly organized Confederate States military forces a few days earlier.[17][18]

In 1873, the newly organized Union Railroad built a new set of tracks in northeastern Baltimore, connecting the original PW&B main line with the Northern Central Railway (NCRY) going north to York and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The new connection ran through the new Union Tunnel to NCRY's new Charles Street Station, north of Mount Royal Avenue.[3]: 488 

20th century
President Street Station during the Great Depression in 1936
In the 1970s, President Street Station was used as a trucking terminal; on the left, behind the head house, is the train shed that was added in 1913 to replace the original 1850 shed.

This station, originally named "Union Station," was rebuilt twice and renamed "Pennsylvania Station" in 1928.

The station on North Charles Street and its successors, in the northern reaches of the city, largely replaced the earlier President Street Station on the southeast for passenger service. The latter continued to serve as a freight station into the 1940s World War II era but served some passenger trains until 1911.[19] The Pennsylvania Railroad, which acquired the PW&B in a merger in 1881, demolished the President Street's eastern train shed after heavy snow damage in 1913 and erected a new, shorter shed, built with wooden roof trusses.[6]

President Street Station was later used as a warehouse. The train shed was destroyed by fire, leaving only the present head house by 1970, when it was abandoned.[9] In 1979, the derelict building was acquired by the City of Baltimore, which planned to demolish it to clear the way for a proposed southern extension of the Jones Falls Expressway (Interstate 83) to connect in an interchange near the harbor with the east - west Interstate 95 which was never built.[9]

In 1989, the station's wooden arched roof collapsed in a snowstorm.[20]

Baltimore Civil War Museum
What was once the station's historic 1850 front passenger entrance is now the back of the Baltimore Civil War Museum.
An exhibit inside the Baltimore Civil War Museum

In the 1990s, a public-private partnership pushed by a supporters group, the Friends of the President Street Station (FofPSS), funded the reconstruction/restoration/renovation of the vacant station and historic site, which reopened in April 1997 as the "Baltimore Civil War Museum" with the assistance of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum, located at the nearby Mount Clare Shops.[17][9]

President Street Station, Inc. operated the museum until 2000, when the building lease was partnered with the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), located on their campus of buildings on West Monument Street, until 2006. The lease/partnership arrangement with the City and the FoPSS originally expired in 2017.[21]

The museum temporarily closed in 2007, due to budget constraints by the MdHS in connection with their nearby extension at the new Fells Point Maritime Museum on Thames Street, then re-opened on weekends only, operated by MdHS and subsequently by FofPSS volunteers.[15][22][23] The Civil War Museum was open on weekends in February 2010, in observance of Black History Month, although heavy snowfall forced closure of the museum on two weekends.[7]

In 2009, the City of Baltimore announced plans to designate the old depot as a landmark, which would restrict modifications to the building's exterior, and to request proposals for commercial development of the grounds. FofPSS opposes this, and called instead for the station's preservation and management as a museum by the National Park Service.[24] The director of Baltimore City's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, which will review proposals, said that any commercial use "must be subordinate to the history" and that a multi-use partnership would be ideal.[15]

In 2015, U.S. Senators Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin introduced bill S. 521 The President Street Station Study Act, which would authorize the National Park Service to study the suitability and feasibility of absorbing the station.[25] It was incorporated into the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act and enacted in 2019.[26]

As of 2015, Friends of the Pennsylvania Street Station operates the museum.[11]

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. Harwood Jr., Herbert H. (1994). Impossible Challenge II: Baltimore to Washington and Harpers Ferry from 1828 to 1994. Baltimore: Barnard, Roberts. ISBN 0-934118-22-1.
  3. Hall, Clayton C., ed. (1912). Baltimore: Its History and Its People. Vol. 1. Lewis Historical Pub. Co.
  4. Dilts, James D. (1996). The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Nation's First Railroad, 1828–1853. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-2629-0.
  5. Dare, Charles P. (1856). Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Guide: Containing a Description of the Scenery, Rivers, Towns, Villages, and Objects of Interest Along the Line of Road : Including Historical Sketches, Legends, &c. Philadelphia: Fitzgibbon & Van Ness. p. 142.
  6. Clement, Dan (1983). "Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad, President Street Station" (PDF). Historic American Engineering Record. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-05-02.
  7. Gunts, Edward (2010-02-22). "Snowfall muffles museum's 160th anniversary". Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on 2013-01-17. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  8. "Allegheny Observer". Railpace Newsmagazine: 43. March 2008.
  9. Potter, Janet Greenstein (1996). Great American Railroad Stations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. p. 135. ISBN 0-471-14389-8.
  10. Peter E. Kurtze (November 1991). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: President Street Station" (PDF). Maryland Historical Trust. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  11. Pitts, Jonathan (2015-04-08). "Road to Lincoln's end ran through Baltimore". Baltimore Sun.
  12. Daniel Stashower. "The Unsuccessful Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln." Smithsonian Magazine.
  13. "The Thwarted Plot to Kill Lincoln on the Streets of Baltimore." Boundary Stones: WETA's Washington DC History Blog.
  14. Michael J. Kline. "The Baltimore Plot, The First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln." Chapter 16, "An Unexpected Arrival." pp. 258-259.
  15. Bykowicz, Julie (May 26, 2009). "City seeks tenant for landmark President Street Station". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  16. Wagenblast, Bernie (2002-12-24). "Re: (rshsdepot) President Street Station (Baltimore), MD". Retrieved 2008-03-08.
  17. Gunts, Edward (2008-01-14). "Train station is on track to preservation". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
  18. Harwood, Herbert H. (Spring 1992). "History Where You Don't Expect It: Some Surprising Survivors". Railroad History (166): 103–125. JSTOR 43523701.
  19. Harwood, Herbert H. Jr. (1979). Impossible Challenge: The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Maryland. Baltimore: Bernard, Roberts. p. 416. ISBN 0-934118-17-5.
  20. Mitchell, Alexander D. (2001). Baltimore Then and Now. San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press. p. 24. ISBN 9781571456885.
  21. Klein, Allison (2000-11-02). "Historical Society to take over Baltimore Civil War Museum". Baltimore Sun.
  22. "Media room". Maryland Historical Society. 2009. Archived from the original on 2009-04-09. Retrieved 2009-04-28.
  23. Sumathi Reddy (2007-12-28). "History for sale in Inner Harbor". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  24. "Station and grounds merit preservation". The Baltimore Sun. May 11, 2009. p. 10.
  25. "Cardin, Mikulski Reintroduce Bill to Advance Preservation of Baltimore's Historic President Street Station". Senator Ben Cardin. 2015-02-13. Archived from the original on 2015-04-17. Retrieved 2015-04-27. Press release.
  26. United States. John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 116–9 (text) (PDF) Sec. 2003. Approved March 12, 2019.
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Preceding station Pennsylvania Railroad Following station
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Terminus
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