We thought it might be fun during Preservation Month to take a few trips down memory lane. And my memory has to do with the story of the second Union Station in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts.

In the 19th century, Worcester had become this major rail hub and in fact, at its height, there were seven different railroads serving the city and serving its strong manufacturing base. The city built its first Union Station in 1875.

Fast forward 35 years, the station needed to be replaced and upgraded. And in comes the second Union Station, which is a Beaux-Arts style building designed by Philadelphia architects Watson and Huckle. It opened in 1911, and the newspapers at the time considered it the most beautiful building in Massachusetts. The papers compared it to Union Station in Washington, DC for the grandeur of its interiors.

The exterior of the building featured two white masonry towers that flanked the main entrance, which, due to structural issues, unfortunately caused by the vibrations of the trains going past those towers had to be removed

By 1926, the towers were a sign of things to come because over the next 15 years, passenger service slowly declined until sometime between 1971 and 1975. The last commercial tenant in the building left, and trains no longer stopped at the station.

Then in 1980, the building was added to the National Register, and then it sat vacant for 25 years. And during that vacancy, of course, it suffered major deterioration from neglect and vandalism, and the freeze-thaw cycle of being exposed to the elements.

In 1994, at the start of my architectural career, the station was acquired by the Worcester Redevelopment Authority, and then the following year in 1995, Finegold Alexander was retained to restore and renovate the station.

As I recall, the restoration proceeded without the benefit of original architectural drawings. We spent weeks in the building measuring and detailing with our profile gauges what little fabric had remained. We relied heavily on, photographic, research. And we used those photographs, of course, to recreate missing building details and finishes that were no longer present in the building.

And even the Worcester residents also contributed to the restoration. I remember one gentleman had salvaged several sections of the stained glass skylight from the Grand Hall. And he permitted us to go take pictures and measurements, and we used those to recreate, the glass in the group in the Grand Hall.

But one of my fondest memories from my early career and this project was competing with my colleagues on who could draft the most beautiful details of Worcester Station. I remember when one person drafted a beautiful lions head on the elevation of the reconstructed towers, I had to one up them by drafting that same lion in section, complete with canines and everything else.

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Look through photos of the station's history in the video below!