Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1988. 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
“Union Station is a historic former railroad station located in downtown Palmer, Massachusetts. The building, which was designed by American architect H.”
Wikipedia article Union Station (Palmer, Massachusetts), CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 123 National Register listings in Hampden County · listed in 1988 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.88000715- 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.
Fires near this property
83 since 2015
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 83 fires within 5 miles of Union Station between
2015 and 2020, burning about 73 acres in total. 11 started naturally. None was 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
Equipment and vehicle use
45
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
12
Natural
11
Recreation and ceremony
10
Debris and open burning
3
Smoking
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
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 1,097 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Union Station between 1857 and
1975: 550 Fungi, 302 Plantae, 225 Animalia, 15 Chromista, 5 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. E. Kirk, A. Lavallee 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
7 workings within 5 miles of Union Station: 5 producers, 2 past producers.
5 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Palmer, the town this property stands in, in 23 storm reports between 1999 and 2024: 15 thunderstorm wind, 4 flood, 2 hail, 2 lightning.
The reports record 1 injury. 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.
Lightning struck the former Gales Newsstand building in Palmer at the corner of Main and Central Streets, setting the building on fire. The building was lost and the building next door was threatened but saved. No one was injured. Damage amount taken from the value of the building from the assessor's office.
Trees and wires in the Bondsville section of town and on Stewert, Maple, and High Streets were downed by thunderstorm winds. One of these trees fell on a house on High Street.
At 656 PM EST, an amateur radio operator reported U.S. Route 20 in Palmer was flooded with manhole covers popped off the road. At 705 PM EST, broadcast media reported flooding on Wilbraham Street, which is Route 20 west of town.
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
4,373 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.
Statement of significance
Inion Station, Palmer, Massachusetts Certifying official has considered the significance of this property in relation to other properties: nationally statewide Xlocally Applicable National Register Criteria XA B Criteria Considerations (Exceptions) Areas of Significance (enter categories from instructions) Architecture Conunity Planning and Development Transportation D Period of Significance 1883-1938 Significant Dates Cultural Affiliation N/A Signitica/A Person Architect/Builder Henry Hobson Richardson, architect Flynt Construction Company, builders State significance of property, and justify criteria, criteria considerations, and areas and periods of significance noted above.
Union Station in Palmer, Massachusetts possesses integrity of design, setting, materials, workmanship, and historical association with the development of Palmer as an industrial and transportation center in the nineteenth century. Designed by Henry Hobson Richardson for the Boston & Albany Railroad, Station remains a well-preserved example of Richardsonian Romanesque style architecture. Union Station is of local importance and meets Criteria A and C for listing on the National Register of Historie Places. Although it was farming that first drew settlers to the valley in the early eighteenth century, Palmer as it stands today was actually built by the mills and railroads of the nineteenth century.
The textile mills were responsible for the development of Palmer's villages of Thorndike, Three Rivers, and residential center grew along the railroad line and was aptly named Depot Village. The caning of the Western Railroad (later Boston & Albany) in 1839 completion of the New London Northern Railroad (later the Vermont Central) in 1850 connected Palmer with water shipping routes in the south reducing the cost of moving raw materials and finished goods to and from the mills. In the first fifteen years after the coming of the Boston & Albany, the population of the town doubled and continued to increase until it peaked in the early 1920s.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 88000715, 15 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
4 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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