Union Street Railway Carbarn, Repair Shop

The Union Street Railway Carbarn and Repair Shop are located in the northern part of New Bedford at 1959 Purchase Street in Weld Square. They are in the southeast corner of a low income residential neighborhood. A deteriorated mid-nineteenth century commercial strip lies to the south of it while much of the area to the east was razed several years ago for highway purposes. A narrow alley divides the Repair Shop, built in 1897, from the Carbarn, built in 1910. : The Repair Shop is a large, functional one story brick building. Its facade, which faces south on Weld Street, is asymmetrically organized.

It is composed of a rect- angular middle section, defined by a corbelled parapet, with two gently sloping wings, also corbelled at the cornice.: A large 20 foot round arched portal commands the western wing, while another stands slightly west of center. Their height allowed the passage of the trolleys with their overhead wires. The western portal retains its original paired doors, each consisting of three elongated panels over nine smaller panels. Four windows light the eastern wing; one balances the center door while the other three are grouped farther east. All had 9/9 double hung sash; however, all but the center window in the group of three have been boarded in. They are all set in segmentally arched openings and rest on granite sills.

The west elevation is ten bays long, each containing a window resembling those on the facade. The east elevation is also ten bays in length but has windows only in its four southern bays. They are paired 6/6 double hung sash in segmentally arched openings. The north elevation is, like the facade, asymetrical with one window at its western end and two on the east. a large city block.

/ARCHITECT The Union Street Railway Carbarn and Repair Shop are significant for their association with the deveiopment of New Bedford as a major manufacturing city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They were the nerve center of the city's ever-expanding trolley system which facilitated the transportation of manufactured goods within the city and offered a web of connections with outlying areas. From its opening in 1872, the Union Street Railway Company became one of the 125 major street/railway systems operating in the United States in the early twentieth century. The cheap, efficient transportation it provided within the city allowed manufacturers to develop their industries in parts of the city which would not otherwise have been accessible to their workers.

As the lines were extended to suburban areas they also allowed people employed in the city to live away from its center. Besides the economic benefits of growth and expansion, the company offered a ready means of transportation into rural recreation areas such as Lincoln Park and Riverview, as well as other ponds and lakes in adjacent areas which would have otherwise been inaccessible to the general public. Lincoln Park, a clambake pavillion and amusement park, was built in North Dartmouth to provide for both an extended ride and for a healthful social gathering place in a country setting. *he presen thuch had Srevio say served he Conpaty and were relacs of hoisecaf dayden When completed, it housed most of the Company's trolley inventory.

This modern facility, which was the Company's main base, had thirteen tracks in the first floor space, six with inspection-repair pits. The maximum capacity of the tracks was seventy-two streetcars.