page_title: Waterbury Union Station
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Waterbury Union Station / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Interstate 84 approaching downtown Waterbury, CT, USA, and its landmark clock tower from the Highland Avenue overpass to the west.
context_page_description: The Waterbury Union Station building is located on Meadow Street in the city of Waterbury, Connecticut, United States. It is a brick building dating to the first decade of the 20th century. Its tall clock tower, built by the Seth Thomas Company, is the city's most prominent landmark.
  Designed by the New York City architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, it handled 66 passenger trains a day at its peak. Later in the 20th century, when the city's rail service had declined to its current level of one commuter route, the building's interior was closed. Today it is in use again as the offices of the Republican-American, Waterbury's daily newspaper.
context_section_description: In the early years of the 20th century, the city of Waterbury, then prosperous and growing, began working with the New Haven and other railroads serving it on an urban renewal program to clear the way for a newer, larger station they all needed. Streets were straightened and buildings demolished in the neighborhood to the east. A small park replaced some of them.
  McKim, Mead & White's design, extravagant in size and decoration, was meant to symbolize the city's prosperity and the railroads' importance to it. As many as 66 passenger trains served Waterbury at the peak of its traffic. The firm's design is different from its typically academic style in its efforts to unite the interior and exterior through similar materials and decorative themes, as well as the vaulted ceiling echoing the arches of the windows. The light reflecting off the warm interior colors through the large arched windows of the main facade made the building particularly welcoming at night.
  A year after construction began, the president of one of the railroads asked for a clock tower, given Waterbury's proximity to the Seth Thomas plant. McKim obliged with one based on the 14th-century Torre del Mangia in Siena, Italy. Architectural historian Carroll Meeks, in The Railroad Station: An Architectural History, believes that model was chosen as a deliberate rebuke to architectural amateurs such as the rail executive. The clock tower dominated the city's skyline then
   and continues to do so today, when most travelers arrive in the city via interstate highway instead of the train.
  In summer 1909, the completed station was opened. As intended, it catalyzed development in the neighborhood. A few years later, the American Brass Company, representing another industry identified with the city and region, built new headquarters across Meadow Street from the station. Its architecture closely harmonized in size and material with the station.
  The station continued to be used for intercity rail service to the city. The New Haven's Nutmeg and several unnamed trains operated east to Hartford and Boston until 1955. The company also operated trains northeast from New York City, through Waterbury, to New Britain and Hartford. The Naugatuck and other NH trains went north to Winsted and south toward New York City. Service declined and then stopped in the later decades of the 20th century. The last commercial service out the station was by the Penn Central railroad company. 
  In the 1970s one of the two newspapers that later became the Republican-American moved into the building, modifying it on the inside and out for that purpose. At that time the south wing was still being used by Metro-North commuter rail passengers as a waiting area; since then that portion of the interior has been closed off and a new platform built. In 1973, Republican-American Publisher William J. Pape assigned company machinist John A. Correia to restore the original mechanisms of the station clock tower, which had been replaced by an electrical tower clock in 1963. The original mechanism is still functioning, on display in the lobby of the station.
caption: Clock tower dominating Waterbury skyline from I-84 as it approaches the city from the west
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