Union Depot at Fourth and Allegheny

The Union Depot at Fourth and Allegheny Streets was built in 1872 to serve the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Huntingdon and Broad Top, which had each been using an existing building as a passenger station. The Historic American Engineering Record documented it as HAER PA-244, compiled by historians Nancy Shedd and Ken Heineman with editors Gray Fitzsimons and Kenneth Rose, part of a documentation project begun in February 1987 whose results were published in the 1991 county inventory.

The survey describes a two-story brick building 135 by 35 feet, with decorative brickwork at the eaves and in recessed panels around its openings, a hipped roof with bracketed eaves, and a stone foundation below grade. When it opened, the Pennsylvania's tracks ran down Allegheny Street, the canal passed south of the station on what is now the railroad right of way, and the depot faced the street, with a roof on iron columns sheltering the sidewalk and a conical-roofed tower on its northeast corner.

The flood of 1889 wrecked the partly abandoned Juniata Division of the canal, and the railroad moved its tracks off the street and onto the canal bed. The station was turned to face south in 1892, the street projections came off, and broad-roofed shelters went up over the new platforms. About 1905 a small enclosed eastbound shelter was built under the existing roof and a 25 foot addition went onto the west end. The survey says the depot closed in 1965.

The surveyors found the building abandoned but rich inside: wainscoting, a round cast-iron radiator, the oak freight-office counter, labeled mailboxes, early light switches, a tile-hearth fireplace upstairs and the original office corridor. They also recorded a leaking roof threatening all of it.

J. Simpson Africa's 1883 history adds an earlier depot a square to the east. It says Andrew Henderson, who served seven years as chief burgess of the borough, built the large brick house at the southeast corner of Allegheny and Third Streets that was long known as the Pennsylvania Railroad depot, before the depot moved a square farther west.

In Huntingdon, the tracks were removed from their hazardous location in the middle of a busy street and relaid on the canal bed.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Huntingdon Station, written data pages, HAER PA-244, Huntingdon Station, data pages, report page 2 (PDF p. 3) · character 4,371 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

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