Main Street Historic District Boundary Increase

This addition to Medina's Main Street Historic District brings in a wooden railroad freight station and a stretch of track on West Avenue. The station was built around 1905 by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company. It measures 300 feet long and 40 feet wide and is purported to be the largest surviving wooden freight station in the country. The one-story, hipped-roof building has clapboard siding, broad bracketed eaves and an interior with intact timber trusses and two Burbank scales. It replaced an earlier freight house that had become too small for the growing village, whose shipping needs rose sharply after the H. J. Heinz Company opened a plant in 1899 to produce cider vinegar and ketchup. The station handled freight until 1965, then served as a furniture warehouse before becoming a railroad museum. The original district excluded the parcel, but it was later recognized that the station and the train depot across the street are connected by the surviving tracks.