The train on the left side of the first photo is a New York Central passenger train, with 4-4-0 locomotive number 1135 in the lead. Here, three large island platforms were situated between the tracks, and passengers could access them via two underground tunnels. However, this view shows the other side of the station, looking north from the southern end of the platforms.

The station was built at the corner of Columbia Street and Broadway, with the main entrance on the western side, facing Broadway. This firm was particularly well-known for their railroad stations, and they designed a number of them for the Boston and Albany, including Union Station in Springfield and South Station in Boston. The station building featured a granite, Beaux-Arts exterior, and it was designed by the prominent Boston architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. However, it was also used by the Delaware and Hudson Railway and the New York Central-controlled West Shore Railroad, and it was the western terminus of the Boston and Albany Railroad, which the New York Central had begin leasing earlier in 1900. Another even larger parking garage stands in the distance on the right side, and further to the right, just out of view, is an interstate highway.Īlbany’s Union Station was completed in 1900, and it was primarily used by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. However, in the present-day scene the railroad station has been converted into offices, while the tracks and platforms are completely gone, replaced with a parking garage.

The first photo shows a large, recently-completed downtown railroad station, with several trains waiting on the tracks and a group of people on one of the platforms. Taken nearly 120 years apart, these two photos capture one of the ways in which transportation changed in the United States over the course of the 20th century. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection. The platforms on the east side of Union Station in Albany, around 1904.

Albany train station