Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Park Street Railroad Station
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1975. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Medford owes its first settlement to the influence of Governor Cradock and Governor Winthrop. The first gentleman was the richest individual attached to the New England Company; and he gave his money with the freedom of an enthusiast.”
History of the Town of Medford, Middlesex County, Massachusetts : from Its First Settlement, in 1630, to the Present Time, 1855 (1855). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1975 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.75000280- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
In writing this History, it has been my -wish to secure Medford such territory in time as its acres are territory in space. The gathering of these annals has been too long delayed. Time, moth, and rust have done thenfatal work on many valuable materials ; and some gentlemen, who felt a deep interest in their native town, have died without leaving any manuscript testimonies. When the history of New England shall be written, the true data will be drawn from the records of its towns. Now, therefore, in humble imitation of those States in our Union which have contributed each its block of granite, marble, or copper to the National Monument at Washington, I ask leave to offer Medford's historical contribution to the undecaying pyramidic monument which justice and genius will hereafter raise to the character and institutions of New England.
The records of the first forty years are lost. I have reproduced them, as far as I could, from documents in the General Court relating to our earliest history ; from several monuments of the first settlers, which are yet standing among us ; from authentic traditions which were early recorded ; and from collateral histories of the neighboring towns. To find the lost, and remember the forgotten, seems to be the province of the local annalist. From the moment I reached the first town-records of Medford (1674), I implicitly followed those excellent guides. Where I could save space by abbreviations, without altering the sense, I have occasionally done so in my quotations, and have used our modern orthography. The spirit of antiquarian research, now beginning to show itself, will lead to the discovery of many facts concerning the early history of Medford which are beyond my reach. These may soon render necessary a new history of the town ; and I hope it may be undertaken by a person whose ability and leisure will enable him to do far greater justice to the subject than has been within my power.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 85 fires within 5 miles of Park Street Railroad Station between
2015 and 2020, burning about 111 acres in total. None started naturally. 29 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Arson/incendiarism
29
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
24
Debris and open burning
13
Recreation and ceremony
12
Smoking
4
Misuse of fire by a minor
2
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,695 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Park Street Railroad Station between 1898 and
1975: 750 Animalia, 510 Plantae, 372 Fungi, 26 Protozoa, 17 Bacteria, 12 Chromista, 8 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A B. Proper and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
17 workings within 5 miles of Park Street Railroad Station: 9 plants, 5 past producers, 2 producers, 1 unknown.
11 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Iron, Lead, Gypsum-Anhydrite. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Medford, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 14 thunderstorm wind, 3 flood, 1 flash flood, 1 hail.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Trees were downed on Corey Street and Riverside Avenue. A telephone pole was downed onto Massachusetts Avenue and wires on Lawrence Street were downed, all by thunderstorm winds.
At 12:52 AM EST, a large tree was down on a car and laying across Auburn Street in Medford. At the same time, a tree was reported down on Summer Street and a large tree was down on George Street.
In Winchester, a large tree was down on a house, which took the chimney off the house on Alden Lane. A tree was down on Cambridge Street by the boat club. A tree was down on wires on wires on the 30 block of Allen Road. Trees and wires were down on Ledyard Road. A tree was down on the 70 block of Lawson Road.
In Medford, multiple trees were reported downed. In Somerville, a tree was down on a house on Vernon Street and a large branch was down on power lines on Walker Street.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,453 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Park Street Railroad Station, built from 1893 to 1894, is a rectangular one story brick building topped by a hip roof, with a porte-cochere and a wing on its southwest corner. The building is located in East Medford on the northeast corner of Magoun Avenue and Thatcher Road along the site of the Medford Branch of the Boston and Maine Railroad. Built on a 12,420 square foot lot, the depot is presently enclosedby a chain-link fence. Although the drive up to the porte- cochere has been removed and relandscaped, the property retains its original brick walkways on each side of Thatcher Road and its fine cut granite retaining walls, platforms and steps along both sides of the railroad right-of-way. Designed by Clarence B. Cutler in 1893, the Park Street Railroad Station is eclectic in style.
Built on an exposed rock-faced granite foundation, the entire station is of red brick. A low granite string course about three feet from the ground and light granite quoins, window sills, and support blocks for the roof's curved wooden brackets, accent the dark walls. The station has four identical entranceways, each surrounded with wood panelling and leaded glass, which are situated in pairs on the north and south elevations. Flanking the north facade, and east elevations, are pairs of large vertically divided plate glass windows with leaded glass top lights. All the doorways and windows are boarded up at present. Under the porte-cochere, supported by curved timbers supports, is an arched brick passageway to the platformarea.
The wing was formerly used for baggage storage and contained doorways at each end and small rectangular windows along the west elevation. Iwo similar windows are located between the doorway on the facade and three others are on the east elevation between the larger windows.
/ARCHITECT STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Park Street Railroad Station in East Medford was among the most architect- urally distinguished and progressively designed train depots contructed by the Boston and Maine Railroad. The enduringly fine quality of this building's masonry and its survival as Medford's last depot enhance its local architectual and historical significance. The Park Street Railroad Station and its demol- ished predecessor which stood across the tracks also stimulated Medford's residential development within the area bounded by Park, Salem and Spring Streets and Riverside Avenue which in turn increased the city's popularity as a commuter suburb of Boston. The "Medford Branch" was incorporated on March 7, 1845 by a group of "substant- ial" citizens including James O.
Curtis, Henry L. Stearns, Joseph Manning,Jr., Daniel Lawrence, Nathaniel H. Bishop and Andrew Blanchard. However, the line was actually built and managed by the Boston and Maine Railroad. The Park Street Railroad Station was part of a $150,000.00 expenditure when the Medford Branch was doubled in the late 1890's to provide more efficient transportation service. The depot was built in 1893 and 1894 when General Samuel C. Lawrence, a vice president of the Boston and Maine Railroad, was serving as the city's first mayor.iIt is thought that Lawrence's candidacy was partially based on promises that the railroad would build updated stations at Park Street and in West Medford.
After its construction Lawrence's pride in the well-appointed new building prompted him to send the gardeners from his Rural Avenue estate to attend to the station's grounds. toilet and heating facilities and a particularly comfortable waiting room for commuters who could take the train at twenty-one different times each day.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 75000280, 11 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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