Elmira Star-Gazette
Friday, September 8, 1950
Old Lehigh Station, Once EC&N, Being Razed
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Landmark On Way Out
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Another Elmira landmark, the old Lehigh Valley Railroad passenger depot and freight station at E. Fifth and Baldwin Streets, soon will gone.
A crew of eight workmen in charge of H.T. Witting from the railroad’s Bridge and Building Department, Sayre, began Tuesday to demolish most of the structure. When the demolishing and remodeling is completed in about two months, all the old station that will remain will be a one-story section along Baldwin St. It will continue to be used as an office and freight station by the Lehigh.
The street floor of the section to be torn down was abandoned as a passenger station June 25, 1938, when the line between Horseheads and Van Etten was abandoned. The station was built in 1883 by the Elmira, Cortland & Northern Railroad, predecessor of the Lehigh Valley here. Stones bearing the initials E.C., & N.R.R. are part of the front of the two-story section. At the right of the one-story west wing is another stone which reads: “E. B. Gregory, Elmira, N, N.Y., Architect.”
The Elmira, Cortland and Northern Railroad was originally the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira Railroad, known familiarly as the U.I. & E. and christened by some wag as the “Urope, Irope & Erope.” [later the E., C. & N. or “Empty, Crooked & Narrow.”]
It was built by Joseph Rodbourn of Breesport, aided by the money and influence of Ezra Cornell, and over its steep-graded line millions of feet of timber moved to market and the towns along its route flourished.
The railroad’s aim was to reach through Elmira to the bituminous coal fields at Blossburg by means of another new line being built from the southwest. This was originally the Elmira & State Line. In 1882 it became the Tioga Branch of the Erie. In 1870 the Lehigh Valley Railroad extended to Elmira, running on Erie tracks from Waverly. In the 1890s the Elmira, Cortland & Northern became a branch of the Lehigh.
