Chappaqua station

Chappaqua station is a commuter rail stop on the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line, located in Chappaqua, New York, United States, within the town of New Castle.

Next to the modern station is the building opened by the New York Central Railroad in 1902. Still in use as a waiting area, it is part of the Chappaqua Railroad Depot and Depot Plaza listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979. It was built on land donated by the daughter of Horace Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor and presidential candidate who had moved to Chappaqua in the mid-19th century and been responsible for much of its early development, on the condition that a small park adjacent to the station be maintained.

Chappaqua was first settled by Quakers moving inland from Long Island Sound in the 1740s. For a century after that, it remained a self-sustaining farming community, centered around the meeting house 0.6 mile (1 km) north of the present downtown along Quaker Road. The meeting house and several other buildings remain from that era. They are now part of the Old Chappaqua Historic District, also listed on the National Register.

In 1846 the New York and Harlem Railroad laid the first tracks along the current route. That led to gradual changes in the economy and geography of Chappaqua. Farmers could now easily ship their crops to New York for sale, and many switched to growing cash crops to take advantage of this. A few businesses began to cluster around the original depot site, a few hundred feet north of the present station. Three buildings were eventually built close to the station.

The rail connection made it possible for those with social and commercial links to the city to maintain them, and some who had business there moved to Chappaqua. Among them was Horace Greeley, the crusading editor of the New York Tribune. He settled there with his wife and daughter in 1853, seeking a quiet country retreat from the demands of his job and a place to test the farming methods he advocated. Shortly after moving in he built the first concrete dairy barn in the country. In 1864 he bought a large farm south of the station and expanded its farmhouse. He lived there for the last nine years of his life.

His daughter Gabrielle inherited the farm. Over the remaining years of the 19th century more city residents followed her family's lead and moved out to Chappaqua. They often settled on farms that had been subdivided into large residential lots. By the turn of the century the 1846 depot was no longer able to handle its daily passenger and freight traffic, and the existing buildings were preventing easy access to the station. As sites for a new depot were being proposed and considered, with considerable opposition from the owners of the three buildings near the old station,. Gabrielle offered to donate the 2.7 acres (1.1 ha) where it presently stands for a station, a public park to always be maintained there, and an access road to be named Woodbine Avenue after her mother's family.

Her offer was accepted, and the station was built there. It was completed and opened in 1902, amid much local celebration. Its completion triggered the development of most of modern downtown Chappaqua, and accelerated the suburbanization of the community, as Gabrielle Greeley continued to subdivide the remnants of the farm for development by others until her death in 1937. The small park, decorated with a statue of her father and war memorial in 1914, remained per the stipulation of her original gift.

In the early 1970s the Penn Central Railroad, successor by merger to the New York Central Railroad, which had absorbed the New York and Harlem, went bankrupt. Commuter rail services it had operated were first run by Conrail, then by Metro-North Railroad after that agency was created under the aegis of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). During the 1980s the new station, with elevated platforms, was built. Café La Track was opened in the old station a decade later.