This is the Poughkeepsie Train Station, which I think of as “The Train Stain” since the time Birmingham accidentally called it that in front of his friends. We all had a good laugh at his expense, and now it’s stuck. This particular station is the last stop on the Metro North Hudson Line, unless you live in the Hudson Valley and you consider our region’s biggest metropolis the first stop on the way to Grand Central Terminal.
The station was opened in February of 1918, designed by the firm Warren & Wetmore, who were given the task to build a station that would prove to the world that the city of Poughkeepsie was a cosmopolitan place worthy to play with the big boys. Inside the station it looks like this:
Chestnut benches, chandeliers, extensive natural light from the five bay windows, restrooms (more on those later,) a ticket booth, and vending machines (which I believe came post-1918.) It’s a great place to relax while you wait for your train with your hula monkey. The city of Poughkeepsie was happy with their train station, and the local paper reviewed it thusly:
Poughkeepsie woke up Sunday and rubbed its eyes when it visited the new station of the New York Central Railroad, and gasped. Was this Poughkeepsie or a station in the Bronx? The new building certainly surpassed anything dreamed of by the present generation of Poughkeepsians and no more will travelers get a poor impression of the place by what they see when they alight from the railroad trains.
I believe the title of the article was “Poughkeepsie, finally as good as the Bronx!”
Little known fact: the train station was modeled after some church in Italy and Grand Central Terminal. Can’t you see the resemblance?
I guess if GCT was made of wood and only serviced 1,633 people a day, the similarity would be more distinct. If you’re dying to read more about this fine train station, let me direct you to the Wikipedia article from which I lifted all the above facts. I love in depth research!
But what about the restrooms? They are (or at least the women’s room is) extremely clean and modern, with some throwbacks to an earlier era. That being the era before liquid soap:
Ever since my Mom and I both had the same problem with The DaVinci Code’s bar soap in the Louvre scene, I get a little thrill the few times I see it in a public restroom. I’m weird, I guess.
Since I was already at the train station, I went ahead and bought a ticket and took the train to the city. (That’s our kickball bar viewed through the train window, there, by the way.)
And why did I go to the city last night? Because awesome SisterAlyson had free tickets to Crybaby: the Musical! As I texted to my friend Chachi later, if the theatre-going me of the early 2000’s knew that the me of 2008 would only see one Broadway play a year and that Broadway play was a bad musical adaptation of a bad movie, she’d be sad. But, really, the me of 2008 is a less harsh critic than the girl who ran follow-spot for the original production of “Urinetown” and was the wardrobe supervisor of a critically acclaimed off-Broadway theater. That girl would have been all, “The follow spot operator kept missing the actress’ face. I’ve seen Johnny Depp play this role, and this dude is no Johnny Depp. Really? Is that set change the best you can do? The colors of these costumes don’t do a good enough job differentiating the two groups of characters. The wacky, campy ending was not earned by the beginning or middle of the show, which were way too earnest.”
But the current, non-theatregoing me was all, “Wow! How did they memorize all those lines? What a spectacle!”
As we walked to the train after the show, SisterAlyson agreed to pose for a picture, like so many tourists, to prove that the Hula Monkey was there.
We parted ways at Grand Central, where she got her subway home, and caught the 10:12 back to Poughkeepsie. Before saying goodbye, she expressed some concern that our parents and I are going fly to California together on Friday and that if we crash, she’ll have no one left except her boyfriend and Lola. I told her that if that happens, she can have Micki the cat.
“Do you promise?”
“Yeah, take her.”
“Okay, before you get on the plane, write it on your body!”
She’s a little bit nervous. But she shouldn’t be. Nobody else in the world wants to take care of Micki.
