Buffalo Central Terminal
Location: 495 Paderewski Drive
Dates: Completed in 1929, Closed in 1979
Architecture: Art Deco Style by Fellheimer & Wagner
District: Polonia (Broadway/Filmore District)
Important Notes: Placed on the State and National Registers of Historical Places in 1984
Last weekend I had the privilege of touring the Buffalo Central Terminal with a few friends and family. Not going to lie, the Terminal has been one of my top bucket-list buildings to photograph inside of for quite some time and I was naturally giddy at the opportunity to visit. My first impression was amazement... I immediately thought about the thousands of travelers who passed through here in the past each day, how shops and service stations lined the edges of the the lobby, the dozens of trains coming and going right outside and so much more.
A short overview on the history of the Terminal taken from http://buffalocentralterminal.org: "This Art Deco masterpiece was built to handle over 200 trains and 10,000 passengers daily, as well as 1,500 New York Central employees. It included shops, a restaurant, soda fountain, parking garage and all other services required for daily passenger operations. Although the Central Terminal had the misfortune to open mere months before the onset of the Great Depression, the building was extremely busy during its first two decades of operation, with no period busier than during World War II. Following the War, passenger rail travel fell precipitously as automobiles and air travel began to dominate. In 1955, the New York Central Railroad put the Buffalo Central Terminal on the market, though there was little demand to purchase such a large building. With the decline of passenger rail service, the New York Central mothballed much of the sprawling Buffalo Central Terminal and created a small station within a station to service the remaining passengers."
"In 1968, the Terminal complex was absorbed into the Penn Central Railroad following the merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads. Penn Central continued to operate passenger trains from Buffalo Central Terminal until 1971, when Amtrak took over operations of the majority of intercity passenger rail service in the country. The final passenger train departed the Buffalo Central Terminal in October 1979, 50 years after this national landmark opened its doors."
