Buffalo Central Terminal is a historic former railroad station in Buffalo, New York. An active station from 1929 to 1979, the 17-story Art Deco style station was designed by architects Fellheimer & Wagner for the New York Central Railroad. Along with Buffalo City Hall (1931), it is regarded as one of the city's two most prominent Art Deco landmarks; both buildings employ setback massing and feature Indigenous American decorative motifs. The Central Terminal is located in the city of Buffalo's Broadway-Fillmore district. Closed since 1979, several attempts to redevelop the site were unsuccessful. In February 2024 a new development team was formed to plan a reuse for the terminal.
Layout The terminal is located about east of downtown Buffalo, and consists of several structures, some of which are connected, while others were formerly interconnected. The station was originally intended to accommodate 400 daily train trips, though the terminal never reached ridership projections when it opened.
Buildings The main terminal building is owned by the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation. The main terminal building includes the passenger concourse and office tower. The passenger concourse is long, wide, and tall ( at the domed ends). The passenger concourse included various rental spaces; a restaurant with a dining room, lunch room, and coffee shop; a Western Union telegraph office; and a soda fountain, along with standard station necessities. Off the Passenger Concourse there is a streetcar lobby and waiting room. Curtiss Street runs directly below the passenger concourse, but has been closed since the late 1980s for safety reasons. The office tower is 15 stories, excluding the main floor and mezzanine and is -high.
The Mail & Baggage Building on Curtiss Street is owned by the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation. It is a five-story building immediately adjacent to the main concourse. The mail building along Curtiss Street is owned by the City of Buffalo. It is a two-story building adjacent to the Baggage Building.
The Railway Express Agency was the early forerunner of today's FedEx and UPS. The building is located behind the Mail Building of the complex and is by far the most decayed building. Trains would pull directly into the building to proceed with the load/unloading of goods. This building is currently owned by the City of Buffalo.
The train concourse is long and includes 14 low-level platforms. Each platform is accessed by a staircase and a ramp. The train concourse is owned by Amtrak, with the land being owned by CSX. In 1982, the bridge which connected the train concourse and passenger platforms from the terminal and main concourse was demolished to allow passage of high freight cars on the Belt Line. The rest of the concourse remains.
Former buildings Other buildings included a Pullman Company service building, an ice house and a coach shop, all of which were demolished in 1966 to lower property taxes.
The first building built as part of the project was a cogeneration power station that provided heat and electricity to the complex, even during construction. It contained three coal boilers. The building's smokestack was dismantled in 1966 to save on taxes. The power plant itself lasted up until the mid-1980s, with its exact demise not known.
History Planning and construction (1925–1929) During the late 19th century, Buffalo had several railroad stations, and there were calls for a single union station. The first attempt to direct rail traffic out of downtown Buffalo came in 1874, when a Union Depot (East Buffalo) opened there. The new station proved unpopular, and thus Exchange Street station remained open. In 1889, a new Union Station was proposed to be built on the site of the future Central Terminal, but it never happened. From about 1905, East Buffalo also served the West Shore Railroad, its service was consolidated from a station on Wick Street. East Buffalo station closed between 1921 and 1923.
The New York Central Railroad (NYC) had two stations in Buffalo in the early 20th century: the Exchange Street Station and the Terrace Station. Both of these downtown stations were old—Exchange Street dated to before the American Civil War—and were plagued with downtown congestion.
NYC decided to build the new Buffalo Central Terminal to the east, in order to relieve both rail and grade crossing congestion and to be more conveniently located for trains not terminating in Buffalo. A roomier area would also ease the transfer of sleeping cars between trains. Furthermore, Buffalo was a quickly-growing city at the time, and it was believed that before long Central Terminal's area would become closer to the center of a sprawling metropolis of 1.5 million people. The city was not so sure, but planning was well underway in 1924, despite the lack of an agreement at the time.
NYC finalized its decision to build the terminal in 1925, and site preparation began the following year. NYC President Patrick Crowley hired Alfred Fellheimer and Steward Wagner to build the actual station in 1927. The cost of the project was $14 million. Prior to the building of the station, the site was bounded to the south by the New York Central main line, to the northwest by the NYC's West Shore Railroad, and to the east by the NYC's Junction Railroad. When the station was built, the West Shore was abandoned between the NYC main line and the Junction Railroad, being rerouted via the other two lines and the new station. The former West Shore right-of-way is now Memorial Drive.
A celebration attended by 2,200 invited guests on June 22, 1929, opened the station. Speakers included Henry Thornton and Frank X. Schwab. Although an eastbound Empire State Express departed the station at 14:10, the train was not a regular one, and was really just ceremonial. The station did not open until the celebration ended at 15:30, and scheduled service began on June 23.
Opening In the early days, the station was served not only by the owner, but also by the Canadian National, Pennsylvania Railroad and the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway.
When the NYC operated the 20th Century Limited, Central Termimal was located approximately east of the half-way point from New York City to Chicago, and the trains would pass each other near there. The NYC's 1930 calendar featured these trains meeting at the then-new Terminal with artist Walter L. Greene's Eastward, Westward night time scene.
The station had 1,500 employees and was designed to handle 3,200 passengers per hour.
For most of Central Terminal's history, far too few trains stopped there to justify the use of such a large facility. Although 200 trains called there at the station's opening, the Great Depression began less than a year after its construction, and the rise in automobile use also hurt passenger levels.
Wartime and decline (1941–1979)
There was a burst of activity during World War II when the station had a reasonable amount of train traffic for its size. Notable trains making daily calls at the station include the Wolverine, Interstate Express, the Ohio State Limited, the Lake Shore Limited, the 20th Century Limited (engine crew-change stop only), the New England States, the Boston Express, the Empire State Express and Southwestern Limited, among many others.
After the war, the station entered into what would be a permanent decline, amid the larger decline in train travel across the country. As early as 1956, the New York Central offered the terminal for sale for one million dollars. A company called Buffprop Enterprises negotiated a 25-year lease of the terminal in 1959, but that ended the following year. The service to Niagara Falls, New York ended by 1961.
In 1966, the continuing decrease in passenger revenues caused NYC to demolish parts of the Terminal complex, including the Pullman service building, coach shop and ice house. In 1968, the NYC merged with the PRR to form Penn Central (PC), which operated the terminal until the formaton of Amtrak in 1971.
The bankrupt PC was absorbed by Conrail in April 1976. In 1978, Amtrak restored direct service to Niagara Falls. One train per day connected with Via Rail/Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway service to Toronto–forerunner of today's Maple Leaf. The financially-strapped passenger carrier was in no position to rehabilitate Central Terminal, resulting in the reopening of Buffalo-Exchange Street station near downtown for the Empire Service route, including the connecting service to Toronto, further marginalizing use of Central Terminal. That left Central Terminal with only two services; the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago and the Niagara Rainbow to Detroit. The four daily trains did not even begin to justify the massive sums necessary to rehabilitate such a large station; Amtrak had to spend $150,000 per year on heating bills alone. Amtrak replaced it in 1979 with the much-smaller Buffalo–Depew station, east of downtown. The last train to call at Central Terminal was the westbound Lake Shore Limited, which departed at 04:10 on October 28, 1979.
Ownership by Anthony Fedele (1979–1986) The building was sold to Anthony Fedele, a local builder, for $75,000 in 1979. Fedele planned a 150-room hotel, offices and restaurants for the terminal complex that would have been called Central Terminal Plaza but could not find investors for the project. Fedele also lived in the building creating an apartment for himself in the tower on the second floor. While the building was under the control of Fedele it was reasonably taken care of.
It was during this time that the railroad tenant left. Conrail closed its offices in 1980. The Conrail Dispatching Department was the last business to leave the Terminal in 1984. Two interlocking towers, numbered 48 and 49, that serviced the tracks on the property were closed in 1985.
In November 1983, in a sign of things to come, the building was in danger of being sold out from under Anthony Fedele by the Internal Revenue Service for back taxes. Fedele made an attempt at settling the debt by paying $10,200 toward the $142,128 due, and agreed to pay $2,000 a month until the debt was paid in full. During the time he owned the building, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1984. ()
Telesco and Tuchman ownerships (1986–1997)
When the terminal was added to the NRHP, it was a "...virtually intact representative example of the Art Deco style in Buffalo..." However, in 1986 Anthony Fedele defaulted on his taxes and U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge John W. Creahan ordered a foreclosure sale. The Buffalo Central Terminal was put up for auction and won by Thomas Telesco, the only bidder, for $100,000. Telesco talked about turning it into a banquet hall and using it as a station on a proposed high-speed rail line linking New York and Toronto. He later began the process of selling the architectural artifacts and other items of value from the building.