This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published April 14, 2014 and can be found here.
The following is a guest post submitted by Emily Morry, PhD, Historical Researcher . Submit your story today .
The last remnants of Rochester's third New York Central Railroad Station, designed by noted architect Claude Bragdon, were demolished almost forty years ago. Now a team of researchers at the University of Rochester is seeking assistance from the local community to help restore the station's memory...
The Claude Bragdon Digital Humanities Project, led by university professors, A. Joan Saab and Joan Shelley Rubin, is developing a website that will feature an interactive 3D model of Bragdon's train station. Drawing on station plans, photographs and artifacts like the tile work pictured above, the project's programmer, Joshua Romph, is rebuilding the intricate structure piece by piece to create a station replica that website visitors will be able to virtually walk through.
The idea, according to U of R history professor, Joan Rubin, is to not only showcase the station's impressive architecture, but also to "recreate an experience." To achieve this feat, the project will supplement the 3D model with written and audio materials. The site will elucidate individual parts of the station (the benches, the ceiling etc...) using Bragdon's own writings (culled from the Bragdon Family Papers of the university's Department of Rare Books and Special Collections) and assessments by contemporary scholars.
The project also hopes to flesh out the train station experience with the recollections of local Rochesterians. If you or someone you know has memories or mementos of the train station (photographs or other salvaged items) and would be interested in sharing them to help to recreate an important part of Rochester's history, please contact the Claude Bragdon Digital Humanities Project at:
[email protected]
- or -
(585) 275-4287.
