(rshsdepot) Riderwood (suburban Baltimore), MD PRR

["Alexander D. Mitchell IV" <LNER4472_@_bcpl.net>]

http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/bal-md.riderwood23jul23.story?coll=3Dba
l%2Dlocal%2Dheadlines
On track to save station
Riderwood: The historic train stop has new owners and supporters who are 
determined to preserve the link to the community's past.
By Brendan Kearney
Sun Staff

July 23, 2002

The former Riderwood station sits just north of Joppa Road, obscured 
from view by trees and houses that have grown up around it over the 
years, concealing a structure with more than a century of rich railroad 
and community history.

However, with the sale of the property in May, the first change in 
ownership in 40 years, and the decision last month by the Baltimore 
County Council to name the building a historic landmark, the station is 
back in the spotlight.

Other railroad stations in the county have been razed, such as the 
Ruxton station in 1961. Community leaders were determined not to let the 
same thing happen in Riderwood, where the station and the railroad 
played a key role in settling an area that was once mainly rural 
estates.

"We live in a world where everything is changing so rapidly, so it's 
good to have something that wouldn't change," said Joseph M. Coale, an 
amateur historian who has lived in Ruxton for five years. The station 
"gives us a sense of who we are, so that we all don't look like a Taco 
Bell or McDonald's. That's what's so valuable about the train station -- 
it shows there is a depth to our culture."

Coale, 58, along with fellow members of the Ruxton-Riderwood-Lake Roland 
Improvement Association, organized the campaign to save the station. 
Through securing petitions to the county government and arranging a 
last-minute donation of $10,000 from the Maryland Historical Trust to 
ensure the sale of the property to an owner who would restore it, the 
group made certain the structure will remain standing.

"These things are worth fighting for," said Coale, who is director of 
public affairs for the state pension system, "because once they're gone, 
they're gone. I didn't want to lose this station on our watch like the 
last generation lost the Ruxton station."

The Riderwood station's story began in the 1870s, when a waiting shed 
and one-room station/general store were built. The station burned to the 
ground in 1902, and the current structure was built in 1905 by the 
Northern Central Railroad. The cost of the station and the property was 
$16,790.

The station was designed by Frank Furness, a Philadelphia architect who 
also designed the Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of 
Pennsylvania and several other railroad stations. It is the last 
Furness-inspired building standing in Maryland.

The late-Victorian building was built in the "arts and crafts" style 
characterized by a deep overhanging shingled roof, a large interior 
brick chimney, extensive use of carved wood and dormer windows, 
according to Janet Reynolds, a Riderwood resident and architect.

The station was built toward the end of the "golden era" of rail travel, 
which the introduction of the Model T helped bring to a close. Riders 
waiting at the station would see such famous trains as the Spirit of St. 
Louis and the Buffalo Day Express fly by on their way to places like St. 
Louis and Chicago, said Lutherville historian Robert L. Williams.

But the last train stopped there in 1959, when service on the Parkton 
Local, a two-car commuter train that shuttled passengers between 
Baltimore and Parkton, was discontinued due to lack of riders.

Margaret McGarity lived at the station from 1962 until this year. The 
widow of longtime Northern Central Railroad employee Edward McGarity 
remembers the engines that passed just feet from her home.

"In the evenings, the fast trains would come by," said McGarity, 78, who 
raised eight of her 11 children in the station. "Boy, it was one after 
another."

McGarity recalls waking up in the morning to find the clothes she had 
laid out for the next day covered in soot. She noted that two dogs and 
"at least four cats" were killed by passing trains and that vibrations 
periodically rattled the old house.

Today, the rail line is used almost exclusively by light rail trains 
traveling between Baltimore and Hunt Valley.

Not wishing to live alone in an old building without many modern 
amenities, McGarity put the house on the market in November. After 
offers from a Towson developer and others, the station was sold in May 
for $250,000 to a Baltimore family. The new owners are doing extensive 
interior renovations.

Despite the discomfort and hazards of living next to a railroad, 
McGarity said, she cherishes the memories of her family's 40-year tenure 
at the station. They were the building's first private owner-residents.

She remembers basketball games her sons played in the spacious living 
room -- the station's former waiting room -- in winter, wedding parties 
in the summer, and the way local freight engineers would "slow down and 
give Mac [her husband] a holler or two."

"It was quite a place," said McGarity. "I loved it."


Copyright =A9 2002, The Baltimore Sun

=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

------------------------------