The following article appeared in the Centennial Newsletter on April 22nd, 2025.
Albertus Magnus College Founded in a Railroad City- The Story of New Haven’s Union Station
When newly founded Albertus Magnus College welcomed its first students in 1925, chances are that some of the students arrived in New Haven by train. Those who lived in outlying towns with railroad stations might have traveled to classes each day by train and trolley. Others, whose homes were great distances from the campus, often used the railroad to travel home for holidays.
Early in the nineteenth century, New Haven’s business and political leaders realized that the railroad would be the key to the city’s prosperity in the foreseeable future. In 1839 James Brewster established the first long distance railroad in Connecticut, with tracks laid between Hartford and New Haven. The railroad station was located on Tomlinson Dock, at New Haven Harbor, approximately where the New Haven Oil Terminal now stands. Passengers and goods would be transferred from the trains to steamboats, most of which were destined for New York.
While this was a good beginning for the rail industry in Connecticut, and particularly in New Haven, the location of the first railroad station in the city posed problems, one of which was the distance between the station and the New Haven Green, where government offices, banks, businesses, and Yale University were located. Within ten years of the building of the first railroad station in New Haven, a second station, called the Chapel Street Station, built in 1849, was located much closer to the New Haven Green. New tracks for this station were laid underground in the Farmington Canal bed, and the station was built over the tracks. The architect for the station was Henry Austin, the same architect who designed the monumental gates for the entrance to Grove Street Cemetery. By now, three separate railroads traveled through New Haven: the Hartford New Haven Railroad, the New York and New Haven Railroad, and the Springfield train that went on to Worcester, Massachusetts. Although this new station was conveniently accessible to the center of New Haven, it proved to be impractical. Dark smoke from the steam engines filled the underground tracks, making it difficult to see and to breathe.
In 1930, when Albertus Magnus College was celebrating the fifth anniversary of its founding, the well known architect Cass Gilbert designed a new and elegant railroad station in the beaux-arts style for New Haven. The new station was named Union Station, and remains New Haven’s railroad station today. Union Station was built on land-fill, on what once had been part of the harbor of New Haven. While this railroad is about three quarters of a mile from the city Green, which had been the major drawback of the first railroad station in New Haven, distance no longer was a problem because, by 1930, a city transit system was coming into place, including horse drawn or even gasoline powered taxis, and trolleys, making travel easy between the center of the city and Union Station.
Just as Albertus Magnus College has experienced growth and change through its one hundred years, so has Union Station changed throughout its nearly one hundred years. Following World War II, railroads in the United States began to decline, resulting in lack of maintenance of once beautiful railroad buildings like Union Station. In 1961, the New Haven Railroad went bankrupt. In 1973, Union Station was closed, and passengers used a passageway to the left of the station to access the tracks. Although Union Station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (as New Haven Railroad Station) on September 3, 1975, demolition of the building was being considered only a few years after that. Finally, in 1979, the building was saved by the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project.
By 1985, restoration was completed, bringing Union Station back to its original beauty. The elegant waiting room is thirty-five feet high, with limestone walls, and an ornate ceiling with hanging chandeliers. Natural wooden benches provide passengers with comfortable seating while waiting for their trains to be posted on the LCD display board. In 2015, this board replaced an iconic mechanical flip-flap display board that shuffled the upcoming train arrivals and departures with accuracy, efficiency, and a distinctive sound that reminded all those in the waiting room of the constant activity out on the tracks.
Metro-North Railroad continues to provide frequently scheduled trains from New Haven to cities throughout the northeastern sections of the country, including efficient commuter trains into New York City. Union Station is one of the most used stations in Amtrak’s entire network. Currently, thousands of rail passengers—including Albertus Magnus College students— leave and arrive at Union Station each day.
Contributed by:
Dr. Joan Venditto
Interior photographs by:
Amina Khokhar ‘22 ‘23