History
In 1889, the Oyster Bay Extension Railroad, a subsidiary of the Long Island Railroad, extended the terminus of its rail line from Locust Valley to Oyster Bay and constructed this beautiful Victorian train station on land donated by Col. Robert Townsend. The original station had a large wooden platform and an elegant porte cochere, a covered porch large enough for horse-drawn carriages to pass through.
In 1891, the Long Island Rail Road connected the land to the sea via a 1,000-foot-long (300 m) wharf that enabled rail cars full of passengers to be loaded onto a ferry. This ferry, called the Cape Charles would take passengers to Connecticut where the railways would be connected to the Housatonic Railroad and continue on to Boston. This unique service from New York to Boston ceased operations when a land route across Connecticut was built.
Also on September 9. 1891, Locomotive No. 113 exploded while idling in the station awaiting passengers. People as far away as East Norwich felt the force of the blast; three crewmen were killed.
When Theodore Roosevelt became President of the New York City Police Board in 1895, he commuted regularly through this station, and when he became President of the United States in 1901, a huge expansion of the station was planned to accommodate the expected rise in visitors to the hamlet. Those 1902 renovations included the removal of the porte cochere and the addition of 400-foot-long (120 m) weather sheds. Inside the station, a large fireplace and tiled hearth were added, and on the exterior a special stucco was used that contained real oyster shells.
At the end of the 20th century, the station fell into a state of disrepair. To accommodate double-decker trains, a new station and platform were built nearby.
The Oyster Bay Railroad Museum has begun work to transform the station into the new home of the Oyster Bay Railroad Museum.
The Oyster Bay Railroad Museum, a NYS Historical/educational Not for Profit Museum is working on the Museum under the Town of Oyster Bay. The original LIRR Oyster Bay railroad station is now owned by the Town of Oyster Bay, rather than the LIRR and currently is not accessible to the public while undergoing various engineering and architectural studies and reviews in order to start the restoration into a museum. The Oyster Bay Railroad Museum Preview Center is now open at 102 Audrey Ave. a few hundred feet from the station building near Oyster Bay Town Hall. (516-558-7036)
Read more about this topic: Oyster Bay (LIRR Station)
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