Utica Union Station: Grand Central's Little Sibling

When Utica's Union Station opened on May twenty-fourth, nineteen fourteen, it was designed by the same architectural firm that had just finished Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Stem and Fellheimer built it in the Beaux-Arts style: granite on the ground floor, buff brick above, a public clock flanked by eagles over the main entrance, and inside, a vaulted ceiling forty-seven feet high above rows of wooden benches and walls of Vermont and Knoxville marble.

The New York Central Railroad expected Utica to become a major divisional hub, which is why they commissioned a hall that rivals Grand Central in proportions. That ambition faded as rail travel declined, but the station survived. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-five and still operates today as an active Amtrak stop, one of the most magnificent working train stations in upstate New York.