By far the largest artifact associated with our organization is Danbury Union Station, which serves as our main display space and welcome center. Our city has been associated with railroads since May of 1850, when a charter was granted to the Danbury & Norwalk Railroad. The first regular train service began in March of 1852. Over the next several decades, railroads in New England continued to grow, linking emerging industrial centers, farm regions, and large cities together.

By the 1880s, Danbury was home to three railroads, each with its own station. The Danbury & Norwalk Railroad’s station was on Main Street on the same plot of land where the Post Office is now, the New York & New England Railroad’s corporate offices and former station still stand as part of the Leahy Fuel Company, and the Housatonic Railroad’s station once stood on the north side of the Maybrook freight line. All three would become part of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in 1892.

In 1896, the ‘loop’ track was constructed to connect the old Danbury & Norwalk line with the former New York & New England Railroad tracks. The construction of Union Station followed, and it opened its doors on July 13, 1903. The new ‘L’ shaped building was said to be the largest station on the railroad’s New York Division. The spacious waiting room is accessed through a 12-foot-wide brick archway. The west end of the room features a fireplace accented with subtle floral patterned brickwork, and the room originally also had a lunch counter in the southeast corner. The long benches in the main entrance hall are all original to the building. The baggage room was in the northwest corner of the building; today it serves as our Gift Shop. The Adams Express room was in the southwest corner. This was later known as the Railway Express Agency; they were a conglomerate of the railroads that handled the shipping and delivery of packages, trunks, and even fresh bakery products. Today, this room houses our research library and archives. In the middle of the station you’ll find the ticket and telegraph offices, used today for museum administrative purposes.

Timetables from the early 20th century report that about 125 trains passed through town daily. Key destinations like Pittsfield, Mass. to the north, New Haven to the east, Maybrook Yard to the west, and Norwalk and New York City to the south made Danbury an ideal terminal location. In 1925, the tracks to Norwalk were electrified with overhead catenary, allowing for direct service to Grand Central Terminal. After World War II, both freight and passenger traffic began to diminish. Once the Interstate Highway System was built, shipping by truck became more feasible and people began traveling by car.

Alfred Hitchcock filmed portions of his 1951 film Strangers on a Train in Danbury. He chose Union Station to play the part of Metcalf Station because of its curved platform and central location in a ‘fair-sized city.’ Around this time, general maintenance would start to be overlooked. It survived the floods of 1955, whose high water mark was 4 feet above the waiting room floor. By the mid 1950s, the canopy sagged so badly that it was reported a fireman getting off a train injured himself by walking into it. It would soon be stripped from the building and disappear before the end of the decade.

The railroads that served Danbury fell on hard times too. The New Haven Railroad went into bankruptcy, and on January 1, 1969, it became part of the Penn Central Railroad. In the 1970s, the building was slated to be torn down as part of a redevelopment plan for downtown. When the Nixon administration withdrew federal funding for the redevelopment project, the building was spared. The Penn Central would soon fail, and in 1976, the federal government acquired the assets of it and five other northeastern bankrupt railroads to form the Consolidated Rail Corporation, commonly known as Conrail. On September 25, 1986, the station was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Conrail became profitable in the early 1980s, and was sold off to CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1999.

In  the early 1990s, the Connecticut Department of Transportation wanted to build a new high-level railroad station that would meet the standards set forth in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) while also serving the commuting public more efficiently than the now-condemned Union Station. They could not rehab the existing building, because the sharp curve of the tracks would not allow for a high-level platform. The City of Danbury would perform a land swap with the state; a parcel of undeveloped land on the opposite side of the loop track for Union Station and the parking lot.

In 1992, the City of Danbury received a federal ISTEA grant of $1.5 million to restore the station back to its 1903 appearance. The project was completed in 1995, and the building was dedicated on October 29th of that year. Our museum has occupied the building since 1996, and while it is no longer an active passenger station, Metro-North commuter trains continue to pass by the curved platform every day.