Huntington History

At the beginning of the twentieth century only a handful of  commuters began their journey into New York City from the Huntington Train Station.  But in 1909, the Long Island Rail Road undertook massive system-wide improvements, including the construction of a new depot in Huntington, that helped to increase daily ridership from dozens to hundreds a day in the 1920s and to thousands a day now.

The Long Island Rail Road, founded in 1834 to provide a rail link from New York City to Boston, had arrived in Huntington in 1867.  The station was located on the west side of New York Avenue in a sparsely settled area two miles south of the Huntington business district.  Over the years, a thriving commercial district separate from Huntington village grew up around the station.

In 1900, the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased a controlling interest in the LIRR, as part of a joint plan to provide direct access to Manhattan.  With an infusion of new money after the merger, the Long Island Rail Road undertook system-wide capital improvements including the construction of Pennsylvania Station (which opened on September 8, 1910); direct access to Manhattan via tunnels under the East River; electrification of all trains west of Jamaica; and the elimination of grade crossings.

The improvements, with a price tag of over $50 million (the equivalent of over one billion dollars today), included $100,000 in improvements in the area around Huntington Station.  The local projects included building a new brick and stucco station house on the east side of New York Avenue; eliminating the grade crossing at New York Avenue by lowering the roadbed; and extending the existing trolley line, which then ran from Halesite to the train depot, down to Amityville.  The extended trolley line would be powered by electricity carried 35 miles from Long Island City to a transformer located east of the new station house.

In January 1909, the railroad unveiled plans for the new Huntington train station, which carried a price tag of $20,000 and featured a gambrel roof with dormers in both the front and back and two large columned porticos on either side of the waiting room.  The new station included direct access from the train to the trolley, which looped into the station on the north side of the tracks, east of the station house.

The new, improved service was greeted with anticipation that Huntington, which would now be just a fifty-minute train ride from the big, new terminal in Manhattan, would become “one of the most important towns on Long Island.”  The Long-Islander predicted that the improvements would “give Long Island by far the greatest boom in its history.”

“The magnificent new depot in Manhattan now nearing completion will in itself be a big advertisement for Long Island right in the heart of the commercial centre of the Western hemisphere,” The Long-Islander predicted.

Huntington’s new station house was opened to the public on October 21, 1909.  Although a “beautiful grove of big trees [had] been so wisely preserved at the northerly end of the tract,” the railroad did not have any plans for landscaping the one and half acre station grounds.  Beautification of the grounds was left up to the community.

The railroad depot and grounds are the first things that greet the eye of the stranger entering a village or city and the last thing upon leaving and the impression gained by the visitor from the appearances of the railroad station goes far towards forming his idea as to the character of the community,” The Long-Islander explained.  Moreover, properly designed and maintained grounds “will give an added dignity and sense of culture and refinement to the town.”  An attractive station “also means better conditions in other ways and a pride in the maintenance of the reputation of the place and the better preservation of law and order.”

The railroad graded the property and provided topsoil and fertilizer.  The Huntington Association, a group of Huntington’s wealthy summer residents, spearheaded a fund raising drive to underwrite the plantings.  Laurel and other attractive shrubbery were planted and “evergreens . . . set out so as to cut off the view of any unsightly buildings.”

Two years after the new depot was completed, the name of the surrounding community was officially changed from “Fairgrounds” to “Huntington Station.”  A decade later over 500 commuters a month traveled from Huntington.

The station became a point of pride for the community, especially after a new stationmaster, Maurice Schuck, arrived in 1916.  Agent Schuck, who lived in an apartment on the second floor of the station house, quickly gained a reputation for excellent service and for beautifying the station grounds, which were described as “an attractive park of stately trees, ornamental shrubs and beds of flowering plants.”  Year after year, he was recognized by the railroad for having the best-kept and most attractive station on Long Island.  Agent Schuck planted hundreds of flowers and bulbs that provided almost continuous bloom from June through the first frost.

Today the local community and the Long Island Rail Road have again joined forces to beautify this one hundred year old building located in the heart of Huntington Station.  A new group called Friends of Huntington Train Station has assumed the role previously played by the Huntington Association.

A century after their construction, the magnificent terminal in Manhattan is just a memory (having been demolished in 1963), but Huntington’s modest station house continues to serve local commuters.