Image by Ron Blunt
Abandoned since 1975, Main Street Station is resurrected in all its glory.
By Heidi Schwartz
For those who appreciate great architecture, it’s tragic when jewels are lost through neglect or abuse, particularly when those icons provide brief glimpses into the historic culture of a country. Many of those emblems are inextricably rooted in traditions of yesteryear, and through no fault of their own, they no longer have a place in today’s world.
Such was the unfortunate fate of Richmond, VA’s historic Main Street Train Station. Originally constructed in 1901, the Romanesque/Victorian/Beaux Arts design was at one time a tribute to the golden age of railroad travel. But from the moment it first opened its doors, the building was slightly out of sync with the other structures of its time.
“The building was originally designed by Wilson, Harris, and Richards—three famous railroad terminal specialists out of Philadelphia—prior to the Spanish American War,” explains David Gilman, project manager with the city of Richmond. “When the war broke out in early 1898, economic hardships prevented the completion of the structure until after the war ended, which is why it was a little bit old fashioned at the time it was built.”
Due to this delay, Main Street Station was a rare, anachronistic architectural specimen. By the time it was completed, the Beaux Arts style had been eclipsed by the neoclassical—the preferred railroad station design style still seen in big cities like Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. In fact, there are only seven other structures like Main Street Station in the entire country. Subsequently, both its head house and shed have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
From Historic To Derelict
Despite its rich history and lofty status, the station’s practical term as a significant railroad terminal ended in 1975, when Amtrak discontinued its service to downtown Richmond. During this time, the head house portion of the building became a discount shopping mall and a poorly designed disco; “temporary” office space for state employees were set up in the shed area. (“It was supposed to be temporary for two years and it ended up being about 12 years, says Viktoria Badger, principal planner for the city of Richmond’s Department of Transportation.)
Image by Ron Blunt
In 1991, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), pronounced “Ice Tea,” made broad changes in the way transportation decisions would be made. ISTEA emphasized diversity and balance of modes, as well as the preservation of existing systems before construction of new facilities. This legislation attracted Badger, because it “opened funding up from roads to more of the multi modal use. We were one of the first cities to jump on it to get funding for the station. More than $53 million of the $54.1 million for the project has been secured from the federal, state, and local governments.”
On behalf of the city of Richmond, Badger could optimize ISTEA’s funding to turn the symbolic, but neglected structure into a multi modal transportation hub. She envisioned “38 trains, a downtown circulator, airport shuttles, taxis, vanpools, tour buses, and Greyhound service in the future.”
Badger’s enthusiasm for the project was contagious, despite the current dilapidated state of the building. Historic preservation specialist and project manager Uriel Schlair of Gensler’s Chicago office recalls, “When I first saw it, the inside was horrendous. It was boarded up and it was an eyesore for the city.”
He noticed “traces of a few failing attempts to revive the building, like a little nightclub that someone tried to open in the corner. There were other signs of intervention that were very short lived and inappropriately executed. But the rest was a mess. It was a building in progressive stages of decay. A section of the wall ultimately had to be replaced. A floor was about to cave in. Windows were broken. The place was boarded up for more than 20 years and showed neglect and severe levels of deterioration. Still, we recognized the jewel this building is and its potential to the city and to its surrounding neighborhood. From the outside, the building was stunning. It stood out in an exceptional way.”
Changing Of The Guards
In 1983, a serious fire nearly destroyed the building entirely. Gilman explains, “One day when the fire happened, the building was on the verge of being demolished for safety issues, but that lasted only one day. Then they determined it was safe to stand, so we started bringing it back.”
Image by Ron Blunt
Owned by a private developer and bank during the time of the fire, the building was purchased by the state in 1995. Shortly after, Badger established contact with Harry Weese Associates (HWA) in Washington, DC and asked the architectural firm to conduct an initial feasibility study regarding the restoration.
Schlair recalls, “By about 1996, HWA was on board, sharing studies with a team of engineers and architects who started generating ideas. Some of them began to carve their path towards the next wave of developments. In about 1997, the project came to a screeching halt; there was no activity of any sort. Then it was revived again, and schematic design was established with the city. Then it expired again for a while.”
Bureaucratic negotiations continued to delay the project’s resurrection until 2000, but Badger was always there to revive it when the mood shifted in her favor. She says, “It sat for several years, because we had so much trouble getting the facility. The state would not sell it to us. We actually had to have general assembly action telling the state it would sell to us. It was a political thing.”
Meanwhile, HWA went through its own metamorphosis. The death of owner Harry Weese in 1998 created a chain reaction of events.
Image by Ron Blunt
At this time, Schlair recalls, “HWA’s Washington, DC office closed its doors and the project was transferred to the Chicago office of HWA, where I was based. I grabbed it, because, at the time, it was in its early phases. It looked fascinating. My specialty has always been restoration and preservation of historic structures anyway. So landmark structures and restoration were ‘in my blood’ for years prior. Obviously, here was a sexy building and I wanted it!”
Eventually, Gensler acquired the Chicago office of HWA, and the firm inherited Main Street Station. Schlair joined Gensler’s Chicago office and stayed on with the project in a change of hands that transitioned through him. “I, as well as engineers from the Richmond firms of HCYU and Daniel Associates, was the linkage between the past and the present in respect to the architectural and engineering design and construction aspects of the project,” he says.
Fortunately, no aspects of the design were watered down during the change. “Gensler was gracious and totally accepting of our role in the project and our approach to this unique undertaking. It was, from our end, a seamless transition,” Schlair recalls.
But because the project sat on the shelf for several years, Paul Piotrowski of URS (the owner representatives onsite throughout the construction of the project) recalls, “There were issues with codes. Once we got into the throes of construction, we realized codes had changed in the interim, so we had to redesign. These weren’t scope changes being driven by the owner or circumstances; they were code issues that dictated the redesign. We built the project and had to design some of the elements as we went along.”
An Inside Job
Construction on the project began in August 2001, but it wasn’t without its setbacks. Gilman recalls, “The first six months was basically taken up gutting a lot of the building, because there was asbestos throughout. In 1901, high quality plaster contained asbestos, so we had to remove all of that before we did anything else.”
Image by Ron Blunt
After the asbestos was contained, the team started serious work on restoring the interiors—more than just a matter of semantics, according to Piotrowski. “There’s a difference between restoration and rehabilitation; this was a restoration. We were trying to match the original materials and the usage of the building, which is very labor intensive. Meanwhile, there aren’t many skilled tradesmen who can do plasterwork and things like that. To make matters worse, every time we opened up a wall, we wouldn’t know what to expect.”
To complicate matters, there were no as built plans, which led to many surprises. For instance, the railroad didn’t use concrete for its elevated slabs inside the building; instead, there was a substance referred to as “rammed ash.” This material was nothing more than ground up coal ash that had been moistened and then rammed into place.
Gilman recalls, “At one point, there had been a kitchen for a restaurant constructed in one of the rooms we restored. When we took all of the kitchen equipment out, the floor broke up into basketball sized chunks of rammed ash, and it was just incredibly scary to walk across it. We had never heard of rammed ash before, so we were on a learning curve. Eventually, we made the decision to pull it out and put a whole new floor in. When we broke it apart, it smelled just like coal clinker.”
While some problems were resolved through the replacement of outdated materials, other structural issues were much more serious. Despite the reputation of excellent craftsmanship of bygone days, many of the original building standards were downright dangerous.
“I always thought of the railroad as heavy industry,” says Gilman, “but you could not build that building today. It was amazing how poorly constructed it was and how we had to reinforce it and stabilize portions of it over and over again. It’s a safe, sturdy building now, but before our restoration, you could find one brick thick walls that went up 40'.”
Schlair confirms, “There were absolutely no life safety systems, in contrast to contemporary design and construction practices. We have a greater understanding of the behavior of materials, people, upkeep, maintenance needs, appearance, and durability, and technology. None of that was available in the past.”
Furthermore, the building was built in the days before other important conveniences and safety measures. For instance, “The front door was just an opening. We designed a glass wall to put in there, air conditioned the building, and made it ADA accessible. We added security cameras, smoke detectors, and all the modern things that were required. We also wired it for fiber optic into the central plant for disbursement in the building. It still has the look of a 1901 building, but it functions as a 2005 building,” says Gilman.
“All ADA and MEP [mechanical, electrical, and plumbing] upgrades, such as a new elevator, were done as unobtrusively as possible, with piping, vents, and wiring fitted behind walls. Several modifications were made to the original design during the construction phase to improve security after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. For example, storage lockers proposed for the building were eliminated, which necessitated redesigning bathrooms and other public areas.” [“Back On Track” by Renee Young, Building Design and Construction, online at www.railfan.net/lists/rshsdepot-digest/ 200410/msg00039.html.]
Another important challenge was restoring the building’s interior to its original glory days. The Gensler team was able to reproduce the ticketing hall wainscoting using as reference a tiny sample found in an electrical closet.
Other restorations were more elusive. “We had a lot of pictures of the station from the old days, but they were all in black and white,” says Gilman.
“We couldn’t even conduct a complete historic paint analysis,” says Schlair, who recalls his frustration, “because those portions of the plaster had been removed by the fire. So it was a matter of developing an interpretive scheme that we generated based on research and educated opinions.”
In the end, the team visited other buildings from the same era to come up with color schemes that would mimic the original black and white photographs. The final color palette was slightly subdued to compensate for lighting updates required by code. Still, it maintained the flavor of the vivid post-Victorian scheme popular around 1900.
Ed Lyon, who was present at the grand opening, wrote, “The interior has been painted in ‘folksy gold,’ which appears to be more peach than gold. The ceiling in the grand waiting room is ‘nettle’ (sea green), French white, and a pale tan color called ‘manuscript.’ The city has added some new touches, including transforming ceilings in the two parlors into starry skies. There are numerous black and white photos from the 20th century showing how the station survived floods and fires.” [“First Train Service Since 1975: Richmond’s Main Street Station Reopens During Historic Ceremony” by Ed Lyon, Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Magazine, Feb. 2004; online at www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3943/is_200402/ai_n9393529.]
The fire also ruined a portion of the roof, while the water damage from the fire hoses basically obliterated most traces of the historic features that were in the building. Column capitals were destroyed. “The entire authentic interior scheme was lost to the fire damage, essentially,” says Schlair.
Aside from the structural difficulties associated with the project, the restoration team experienced its share of supernatural incidents as well. Badger half jokes when she mentions the ghost on the upper floor.
She says, “The workers who were doing all of the stripping of the woodwork swore that they heard movement upstairs. But when they’d go upstairs to check it out, they couldn’t see anybody. Then one of the guys from URS thought he heard something like an air conditioner or a body sliding across the floor upstairs; when he went up there, no one was there. He had been a transit cop in New York, so he wasn’t the type to get phased easily.”
“To top it off,” adds Badger, “we had some cameras that just wouldn’t work up there!” (Nothing more has been heard since the completion of the project, leading Gilman to believe, “the ghost is happy with the renovation.”)
