Richardson's railroad relic

Photo by Cervin Robinson, Historic American Buildings Survey, June 1959.

Recognize this? You might spot it if you look to your right about 500 feet after leaving Woodland Station on the MBTA's Green Line trolley heading to Riverside Station. Yet it might not look quite like this, because of the sad shape it's fallen into since this photo was taken in 1959 as part of the U.S. Government's Historic American Buildings Survey.

1886 photo courtesy of the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

Historic, indeed. This happens to be the original Woodland depot, designed by the great architect Henry Hobson Richardson as one of a string of stations on the Boston & Albany Railroad, which in 1958 became the Highland Branch of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), now the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

Photo by Cervin Robinson, Historic American Buildings Survey, June 1959.

Built by the Norcross Brothers in June-September 1886 (beginning two months after Richardson's death), the station typifies the architect's Richardsonian Romanesque style of rock-faced granite trimmed with Red Longmeadow sandstone, a mountainous medieval gable, and a horizontal, earthbound spread across the land. Richardson and his style were chosen to craft the station as a landmark in a largely unspoiled tract of bucolic boondocks in Newton, in the hope that its Romanesque regality would entice more people to settle in that back country and bring in new revenue for the railroad whenever they traveled on business or vacation.

Photo by Cervin Robinson, Historic American Buildings Survey, June 1959.

Yet this station eschews Richardson's trademark Roman arches, carved ornament and Arts-and-Crafts décor for a simpler, crisper structure and interior, as if inviting riders from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to wait inside for their train in an atmosphere that would feel like home to all, without the pretension of his Trinity Church, public libraries and homes for the rich.

Today it caters to the rich, but in a plebeian way as a storage "caddyshack" for the Woodland Golf Club. While the club is kept clean, Richardson's railroad relic is relegated to grungy groundskeeper status, its original use and architect spat on (and likely unknown) by those who exploit it for an ace-in-the-hole...

Photo by Pi.1415926535 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

...particularly with a loading-dock door that has made a hole where one of the original double windows that provided views of incoming trains from either side once was. Once a gracious gateway to future wealth, H.H. Richardson's original Woodland Station is now an onlooker onto a staid wealth it cannot partake of, on the lookout for an angel who will restore it to its former glory.

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