Efforts continue to preserve old Aberdeen train station

Jack McLaughlin
HBL Editor
9/11/09

Preservation of the 125 year old B & O railroad station in Aberdeen is moving ahead. CSX, the station’s owner, has agreed to convey 14,000 square feet of its property off W. Bel Air Avenue to the Historical Society of Harford County as a new site for the building. The railroad requires the station be moved away from its tracks. Plans call for moving it back about 50 feet from its present position and about 100 feet south (toward Baltimore) and away from Bel Air Avenue.

The goal has been to preserve the station with the idea of finding an occupant, possibly a commercial user, like a restaurant or shop. Deed restrictions required by the railroad will prohibit any residential use of the property.

A nominal payment will be made to CSX for the land, said Richard Herbig, the historical society’s second vice president. Settlement on the contract is pending.

Current plans call for moving the building, repairing and restoring it and finding an occupant.

Herbig said the Historical Society could convey the station to the Aberdeen Room Archives & Museum, Inc., which has joined as a local partner in saving the building, or another agency. It might possibly be used by the city or a private developer who would pay the restoration costs.

Bill and Charlotte Cronin, long time Aberdeen residents who were instrumental in the founding of the Aberdeen Room on Howard Street, have been interested for years in restoring the station. Mrs. Cronin said it played an important role in the lives of many area residents, noting it was the place where newlyweds departed on their honeymoons and men went to and returned from war.

When the Harford County Historical Society asked the Aberdeen Room to join in efforts to save the station, its board of directors agreed. Originally the railroad wanted the station removed from its property but eventually agreed to donate a piece of land to relocate it near its original site. “CSX showed some soul and heart,” observed Bill Cronin.

His wife said she would prefer to see the station used as a community center, perhaps with an office for the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce and an alcove for historical items. “But I know we have to see what comes,” she said. Mrs. Cronin pointed out the station is not far from mansions built in the late 19th century by members of the Baker family, prominent in the county’s then robust canning industry. A spur line ran a few hundred feet from the railroad main line to the Baker cannery and warehouse at the corner of Bel Air Avenue and Baker Street.

Frank Furness, who was the architect of many railroad stations and depots in the 1880s and 1890s, designed the station. Charlotte Cronin, the daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughter of railroad men, recalled taking her first steps in a station near Philadelphia that was also a Furness building. Many railroad stations had living quarters for employees and Mrs. Cronin said the one she lived in was quite spacious.

Maryanna Skowronski, the historical society’s executive director, said the organization has been awarded $100,000 in matching grants from the Maryland Historical Trust, $2,500 from the Emmert Hobb Foundation for an environmental assessment of the proposed relocation site and $8,000 from Preservation Maryland for roof repairs and a feasibility study. Funds from the Kinsley Foundation, the Klein Family Foundation as well as private donations total about $25,000 raised to cover expenses incurred to date.
The station was built in 1885 by Furness, Evans & Co.  As originally constructed, the wooden frame building on a brick foundation had a freight room, a station office, a waiting room and an office on the half story above the ground level rooms within its 2,465 sq. ft. Some additions and alterations, including installation of toilets in the waiting area, were made over the years.

Furness, architect and Congressional Medal of Honor winner for his service in the Civil War, designed an estimated 650 buildings, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Zoo gates.  He died in 1912. Furness influenced a number of young architects including Louis Henry Sullivan, creator of the Chrysler Building in New York. Frank Lloyd Wright was one of Sullivan’s students.

The chair and paneling in an upstairs office were relatively recent additions to the Aberdeen B & O station, built in 1885.

Aberdeen’s B & O station was a stop on the railroad’s Royal Blue Line from Philadelphia to Baltimore. It was a busy place through WWII, but things began to change during the post war years. On April 26, 1958, the B & O, by then combined with the Chesapeake and Ohio, ended passenger service in Aberdeen. The station continued to be used as a maintenance facility.  In the 1960s, the Chessie System, later CSX, became the owner of the property. By the 1980s the building was not being used for any purpose and it deteriorated to the point the City of Aberdeen condemned it in 2003. The Historical Society of Harford County stepped in and has leased the property for $100 a year with the intention of restoring it.

Charlotte Cronin said a number of people have told her that once the restoration project is started they are willing to volunteer their help with things like painting. That will be good, since the restoration is to include a coat of harvest gold paint. A century old painting of the station shows it that color and some remnants of gold paint have been found on some shingles.

“I’m looking forward to the day we finally get the chance to move this building and get it fixed up and usable,” said Aberdeen City Councilman Ron Kupferman, who added he thinks the refurbished station would be “a tremendous asset to the city.”

Skowronski said she has been encouraged “by the number of people who have stopped by to express their support of the project during the various times we have been working at the station.” City Councilwoman Ruth Elliot said, “I’m very excited. This has been a long time coming.”  She said the station project would be something “the community can come together on.” Elliott said she thinks support will increase when people see work being done on the site. “And we’re always looking for donations,” she added.

Tax-deductible donations can be made in the form of checks payable to the Historical Society of Harford County, 143 North Main Street, Bel Air, MD 21014. A notation should be made that the donation is for the B & O Station fund.