Gary Union Station’s porte-cochere, which once protected travelers dressed in their finest from rain, sleet and snow, is crumbling.
Its steel supports are exposed and rusting. Smashed beer cans litter the red-brick pavement in front of the station. A posted notice, in faded black paint, reads: “No parking. Cabs only.”
Inside, a once-beautiful marble and granite floor is now reduced to fragments and dirty with decades of grime. Lumpy, moldy mattresses, broken glass from nearby windows and a legless, faded, floral-pattern sofa comprise present-day furnishings. An Amtrak train rumbles by overhead.
But for all its problems, the Gary train station and an accompanying smaller structure have remained remarkably intact and graffiti-free. Now, it looks like the station might be restored.
Gary is exploring the idea of turning the station, on a strip of land off Broadway that connects to the Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore, into a visitors’ center for motorists traveling on nearby Interstate Highway 90 and a staging area for bicyclists on their way to the nearby dunes. And, maybe, returning the station to its original use for a planned high-speed rail corridor, a possibility that excites many old train station enthusiasts.
This re-use plan looks promising to Todd Zeiger, director of the northern regional office of the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana. But he’s not breaking out the champagne.
“I don’t consider a building saved (when the effort to save it begins),” he says. “It’s only when we cut the ribbon that I know the building is saved. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s a start.”
It’s only natural that Zeiger is wary. He and other colleagues have long lobbied to save the approximately 14,000-square-foot facility. The train station earned spots on the National Historic Landmarks Foundation’s 10 Most Endangered Sites List and the Great American Station Foundation’s 10 most endangered train stations list two years ago.
Gary officials want to restore the train station as part of a downtown redevelopment plan. They envision the downtown area as a cultural entertainment core, easily accessible by the tollway, as well as Interstate Highways 80 and 94 and the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad. The Continental Basketball Association is considering establishing a franchise in Gary, using a 10,000-seat convention center in the city’s downtown.
City officials have earmarked $25,000, a grant given to the historic foundation, for a feasibility study of the station’s reuse. They expect $725,000 in federal funds, for which they applied in December, for the first phase of restoring the train station and converting it into a visitor center. City officials are optimistic because the project meets all criteria for the funding.
Zeiger likes the idea. “Its proximity to the toll road and tracks lend itself well for a visitor center,” he says.
The station was built in 1909, just as Gary itself was getting under way. Home to United States Steel Corp., Gary was intended to be a planned industrial city–“The City of The Century.” So planners pulled out all the stops, using the latest architecture and technology to build the Gary train station, the first stop for most people visiting Gary via the New York Central System and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
“When it was built, it was to make a statement about Gary,” says Zeiger. “No doubt it was a jewel at its time.”
Architect M.A. Lang borrowed the Neo-classical style made popular a few years earlier by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Lang used the newest construction technique: poured-in-place concrete, scored to resemble stone. Such solid construction is what has helped it weather the years.
The train station, which had its heyday in the 1920s, was shut down in the 1950s as nearby highways were built and Gary began an economic decline. The train station was briefly converted into an automobile salvage operation.
It has remained abandoned for years, with not even boards on the windows or doors to keep vandals, vagrants or the elements out.
But even as Gary officials talk about turning the train station into a visitor center, transportation experts say the old station is poised to take its place next to other restored train stations, such as Washington D.C.’s Union Station.
“You look around the country and there are a growing number of instances where train stations have been revitalized and brought back in such a way so that the facility not only provides transportation benefits, but acts as a catalyst for economic development in the area,” says Scott Hercik, senior director of planning and development for Amtrak in Washington, D.C.
Of course, what worked in Washington won’t necessarily work in Gary. “You have to look at how well it fits into everything that’s going on in that area,” he says.
One way to ensure that a station fits in with everything going on in a community is to let it offer different transportation options. Washington’s Union Station, for example, is served not only by Amtrak trains but also by commuter trains, buses, tourists shuttles, taxis and more.
Gary’s Union Station could provide those same options, he says. For one thing, Gary’s Union Station is next to a rail line reserved for the Midwest Rail Initiative, which intends to bring high-speed rail to Midwest. The high-speed trains would link Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit.
An executive summary for the Midwest Rail Initiative was released 10 days ago, said Jonathan Warner, senior development manager for Transportation Economics and Management Systems Inc., in Frederick, Md. Initiative members are moving toward implementation. Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin are working together to complete train specifications, rail upgrades and equipment purchases for the first phase. Once they choose the equipment, it will take manufacturers two years to deliver. Indiana is part of the second phase of the project.
Zeiger points out that Gary’s station has tunnels under the tracks to enable train travelers to easily reach the elevated platforms. Duplicating such tunnels in a new station would be expensive. And the current Amtrak station for the region is a few miles west in Whiting, a less-convenient location for a high-speed rail depot to serve Gary. But since railroad lines such as the CSX are around the Gary station, parking is a problem that would need to be solved.
At least one Gary official likes the idea of using the train station for high-speed rail.
“It’s possible that Gary or Michigan City would be the first stop (in Indiana),” says Taghi Arshami, director of Gary’s division of planning and development. He says the market exists for high-speed rail in Gary: At least 10 people a day travel between Detroit and Gary.
The high-speed rail initiative also makes sense to Hank Dittmar, president of the Great American Station Foundation in Las Vegas. “It’s not practical to widen highways,” he says. “It’s not easy to build more airports, so high-speed rail becomes an attractive option.”
But most preservationists don’t care what the train station is used for, just as long as it’s saved.
“It creates an unbroken chain from the past and reminds of who we are,” says Dittmar.
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Next Sunday in Real Estate, Mary Beth Klatt looks at Gary’s downtown redevelopment plans.
