R.R. Station, Pomfret, Conn. 49.

R.R. Station, Pomfret, Conn. 49.

View of an elaborate brick railroad station and utilitarian structures behind. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. The sight of such a fancy railroad station structure in such a small, outlying village as Pomfret would have stopped the Eastern photographer in his tracks. The refined nature of this passenger station has roots in the cultural history of the town, a rural enclave of educated and wealthy people drawn to the natural beauty and unspoiled character of this agricultural Connecticut village during the urbanizing late 19th and early 20th centuries. "An August, 1905 (Hartford) Courant article said the NYNH&H (New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company) had begun work on a new station here to replace the one that burned in February. It said that the "handsome" new one would be 85 feet long and cost about $18,000. Other sources add details and tell us that sizeable new station was constructed of Harvard brick by Hartford contractor William Patterson at a cost of $16,019 and that it measured 82x25 feet...The baggage room was in the west end of the building and express was handled at the other end. There was a large waiting room furnished with a hearth inscribed with NYNH&H RR, and six settees, separate water closets for men and women and the agent's office was in the bay. We have always wondered about the elegance of this depot at what was otherwise a lightly patronized stop. According to town historian Walter Hinchman, the story is that, when the "pretty little" POMFRET2 burned down, Mrs. T. Morris Murray (Eleanor Vinton Clark) donated funds for a grander edifice. While there is no written record of this transaction, wealth was not an issue. She and her husband owned properties in Boston and New York and their 200-acre estate Elsinore here was home to a flock of peacocks and she rented an elephant in the summers to amuse her grandchildren! " [source: http://www.tylercitystation.info/stations-o-p.html]