Welcome to North Creek

North Creek's depot complex centered on a fine example of a typical late 19th-century rural railroad station. An original one-room depot built in 1871 was later abandoned, and the present depot was constructed with platforms fitted with two bays to accommodate stagecoaches and freight wagons. The freight house was built in 1903, and the larger railroad complex included the ticket depot, freight house, engine house, tool house, 90-foot turntable, sand tower, and stagecoach stables. North of the freight house stood an ice house, water tank, grain shed, coal shed, lumber platform, and garnet shed and platform. The depot itself is a simple rectangular, gable-roofed building with a broad overhanging strut-supported roof. Its exterior, in stick style, is covered with vertical boards and batten strips, a decorative treatment called carpenter gothic revival, while hoods over the windows and doors reflect contemporary Italianate influence. At the depot's south end, a gable-roofed open pavilion was added in 1880; like the station, it was executed in stick style, with notched rafter ends and an egg-and-dart decorative border at the gable end, and its roof was covered in cedar shakes. Early photographs show that the egg-and-dart motif also once decorated the roof crest. In 1890 this addition was partially enclosed to create a separate ladies waiting room. Analysis of paint samples found that the station's exterior was painted a light brown known as Johnsburg Brown, a locally made paint using clay as pigment, with green label molding and tall narrow red window sashes.

North Creek, New York · United States