Someone on the NJT Rail forum suggested I might get more answers here-anyone?
I'm curious as to the history of the Trenton Train Station. My family is from the city and my mother grew up within walking distance of the station. Her grandfather was an engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad and worked out of the station quite a bit. My mom remembers the station's hideously ugly days well as it had looked that way as far back as she could remember, having taken the train to New York and Philadelphia as a child with her parents. Yesterday I had to travel to Washington for work arrived at the station early so that I could wander around a bit since I hadn't seen the inside yet. The station is impressive and beautiful and will be a great centerpiece for the city once it's finished. However, it got me wondering-did Trenton ever have a "grand" railroad station? If so, what happened to it? If not, why not? Trenton has certainly fallen on hard times, but at its peak, though relatively small in population (Trenton's peak population was somewhere around 130,000 people) the city was, and in some ways at least, is an important place in terms of business and government. Why was it that Trenton never had a grand station like Newark Penn or any of the other beautiful stations along the Northeast Corridor? I did a search of the board and found some pictures from the late '40s (before even my mom's time) of the station and it looked remarkably the same-was it always that ugly?
I'm curious as to the history of the Trenton Train Station. My family is from the city and my mother grew up within walking distance of the station. Her grandfather was an engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad and worked out of the station quite a bit. My mom remembers the station's hideously ugly days well as it had looked that way as far back as she could remember, having taken the train to New York and Philadelphia as a child with her parents. Yesterday I had to travel to Washington for work arrived at the station early so that I could wander around a bit since I hadn't seen the inside yet. The station is impressive and beautiful and will be a great centerpiece for the city once it's finished. However, it got me wondering-did Trenton ever have a "grand" railroad station? If so, what happened to it? If not, why not? Trenton has certainly fallen on hard times, but at its peak, though relatively small in population (Trenton's peak population was somewhere around 130,000 people) the city was, and in some ways at least, is an important place in terms of business and government. Why was it that Trenton never had a grand station like Newark Penn or any of the other beautiful stations along the Northeast Corridor? I did a search of the board and found some pictures from the late '40s (before even my mom's time) of the station and it looked remarkably the same-was it always that ugly?
