Yonkers Trolley Barn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Yonkers Trolley Barn
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North elevation, 2009
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 Location in New York
Location in the United States
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| Location | Yonkers, NY |
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| Area | 1.6 acres (6,500 m2) |
| Built | 1903 |
| Architect | Albert V. Porter |
| Architectural style | Renaissance Revival |
| NRHP reference No. | 02000141 |
| Added to NRHP | March 6, 2002 |
The Yonkers Trolley Barn is an old building on Main Street in Yonkers, New York. It's a huge brick building built over 100 years ago. It looks like buildings from the Renaissance Revival style.
In 2002, this building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. This means it's an important historical site. It's the last trolley barn left in Westchester County. It's also the only part of Yonkers' old trolley system that still exists.
For about 50 years, it was a busy place for the city's trolleys. After that, it became a city office building for 20 years. Then, it was empty for almost 30 years. Later, a developer changed it into loft apartments. This process is called adaptive reuse, where an old building gets a new purpose.
The first developers had problems and couldn't finish the building. Another developer bought it and completed the project. Today, many people live there. A chase scene from the movie Catch Me If You Can was even filmed nearby. In 2014, a local brewery announced it would open in the Trolley Barn.
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Exploring the Trolley Barn Building
The Trolley Barn is in downtown Yonkers. It sits on a 1.6-acre (6,500 m2) piece of land. This land is between Buena Vista Avenue, Main Street, and the railroad tracks. These tracks are mostly used by Metro-North trains.
The area around it, called Getty Square, is very busy. The ground is mostly flat, close to the Hudson River. It rises a bit to the east and more steeply to the south.
North of the building is a small concrete area with trees. This spot is used for picking up and dropping off people for the train station and Bee-Line Bus. Northeast of the barn is the Yonkers post office, which is also a historic building.
To the east is a parking garage. South along Buena Vista Avenue are smaller shops and factories from the same time period. Southeast, there are parking lots and some open spaces.
The trolley barn building covers almost the whole lot. There's a sidewalk and parking on the north side, along Main Street. A statue of singer Ella Fitzgerald, who grew up in Yonkers, is on the sidewalk. There's also a narrow sidewalk along Buena Vista.
The trolley barn has two main parts. The main building is three stories tall and made of brick. It has a steel frame and an unusual shape. This shape matches the land it's built on. Attached to the south is a two-story brick building. This smaller part used to be an electrical substation.
Outside the Building: What it Looks Like
All sides of the building that face the street have a visible foundation. This base is made of rough brick. Above it, there's a special terra cotta border. The rest of the building is made of brown brick with small iron spots.
The front of the building, facing Main Street, has the most details. There are two storefronts on the east side. On the west, there are larger openings with three cast iron pillars. Above the first floor, there's a granite ledge.
The second floor has 15 windows, grouped in threes. These windows are shaped with a rounded top. They have two parts that slide up and down. A granite ledge separates the second and third floors. The third floor windows are also rounded at the top. A second entrance is on the southeast side, near the substation.
Above the third floor, there's another terra cotta border. The main building has a flat roof. The substation has a pointed roof. Both buildings have a parapet at the top, which is a low wall. The main building's parapet has steps on the north side and is topped with granite. In the middle, there's a large recessed panel with terra cotta trim. The substation has a similar, smaller stepped parapet.
The windows on the east side look similar. The windows on the south and west sides are simpler. They have bluestone ledges. The roof has bluestone on top, supported by terra cotta decorations.
Inside the Building: New Uses
The inside of the building has been completely changed. It used to store and fix trolleys. Now, it's been converted into homes. The old trolley tracks that were once inside are gone. The space is now divided into loft apartments. These apartments are about 1,100–1,500 square feet (100–140 m2) in size. Some even have very tall 20-foot (6.1 m) ceilings!
The original way the upper floors were supported is still there. They were held up by curved terra cotta tiles between steel beams. The roof has flat terra cotta slabs on steel supports. These are held up by strong steel trusses. The terra cotta arches are also supported by steel columns.
The Substation: A Powerhouse Transformed
The substation's front side, facing east, uses similar brown brick as the main building. Its base is made of rough granite blocks.
On the first floor, there's a main entrance with a rounded arch. On each side, there are two rounded-arch windows. Above these windows, a granite ledge separates the first and second floors. The windows on the second floor are also rounded at the top. A terra cotta border separates this floor from the parapet. More terra cotta decorations are below the parapet's granite top. On top of the roof, there's a small structure with a metal roof.
The inside of the substation has also been changed into loft apartments. Like the main building, its roof is supported by terra cotta tiles and steel trusses. An original middle floor was removed during the building's renovation.
History of the Yonkers Trolley Barn
Before the 1840s, Yonkers was a quiet farming town. Farmers used the Hudson River to send their crops to New York City. In the 1840s, the Hudson River Railroad was built. This helped Yonkers grow into an industrial city. By 1855, about 5,000 people lived there.
Yonkers kept growing after the Civil War. It officially became a city in 1872. Many workers moved to the city for jobs. To help them get to places like the Alexander Smith Carpet Mills, the city started a trolley system. The Yonkers Railroad Company opened it in 1886.
At first, the trolleys only ran along Main Street. But the system soon needed to expand. In the 1890s, the trolleys became electric. The Third Avenue Railway Company, which ran streetcars in Manhattan, bought the Yonkers Railroad Company in 1898.
Five years later, in 1903, the trolley barn was built. It was used to store and fix the trolleys. It also served as the company's office. Newspapers at the time celebrated its construction. They saw it as a sign that Yonkers was becoming a big city. The city's population had grown almost ten times since the mid-1800s.
Not much is known about the architect, Albert V. Porter. He was likely from Yonkers. He combined classic Renaissance Revival designs with the trolley company's needs. He also made good use of the unusual shape of the land.
Trolleys entered and exited through large doors at the northwest corner. Tracks inside the building allowed them to be stored and repaired. An elevator could bring them to the second floor. This floor had offices, reading rooms, and recreation rooms. The third floor was only for trolley storage and maintenance. At its busiest, the barn serviced 85 trolley cars.
The barn helped the trolley network grow to nine lines. These lines connected with other trolley systems, like those in Mount Vernon. The Broadway lines even connected to the New York City Subway's Broadway–Seventh Avenue line in the Bronx.
By 1911, the trolleys carried over 14 million passengers each year. The system helped Yonkers grow as people moved from downtown to new homes. In 1922, trolleys carried 70,000 passengers daily over 53 miles (85 km) of track.
Some changes were made to the building over time. An entrance was added along Buena Vista. The openings at the northwest corner were rebuilt and made larger. New cast iron pillars were also added.
In the 1930s, more people started buying cars. Trolley systems began to close down, replaced by buses. The Yonkers Railroad Company stopped operating in 1953. The tracks were removed, and the cars were sold. But the barn stayed. The city's Street Lighting Bureau used the offices until 1975.
In the late 1900s, downtown Yonkers faced problems. Many wealthier citizens had moved away. Industries closed or moved, leading to urban decay. When the trolley barn was listed as historic in 2001, most of its windows were boarded up. It had been empty for a long time.
The city decided that restoring the trolley barn was key to making downtown better. In the early 2000s, the building gained attention. Its outside was used for a chase scene in the movie Catch Me If You Can. Soon after, a developer bought the barn. They started changing it into loft apartments. It opened in the mid-2000s.
However, the project faced lawsuits between the four partners. Tenants waited for promised features like a gym and laundry room. In 2009, Metro Partnership bought the building. They finished the project under the name Metro92. Rents went up, but tenants were happy to see improvements finally happen.
In 2014, the Yonkers Brewing Company announced it would move into the Trolley Barn. One reason was its easy access to the train station in Getty Square. They hoped to attract more people who travel by train to visit breweries.
