North Chatham Depot stood on the thirty-seven-mile Albany-Hudson electric rail line that connected Albany and Hudson from 1900 to 1929, an interurban route that used electricity for high-speed travel between cities and villages across rural areas and stopped at fourteen passenger depots, including North Chatham. Built in 1900, the depot featured overhanging roofs to shelter passengers, a large waiting room and freight office doors, and a bay window with a clear view of the tracks. It became a busy center of community life where people received mail, packages, and news from the outside world. Converted to a fire station in 1940, it was restored in 2013 and became the home of the North Chatham Historical Society, and it is part of the North Chatham National Register Historic District. North Chatham was also unusual because it was the only surviving substation on the line and the only one that also served as a passenger depot. The Albany and Hudson Railway and Power Company generated electricity at its Stuyvesant Falls plant to power the line and provide the first electric service to communities along the route. High-tension wires carried 12,000-volt, 25-cycle AC power to substations at Hudson, East Greenbush, and North Chatham, where it was stepped down in air-cooled transformers, converted to DC power in rotary converters, and delivered at 600 volts to the third rail, the first used to power a U.S. interurban rail line. The line also carried freight such as milk, farm products, cotton and wool for textile mills, and finished goods, and North Chatham remained a busy freight point where daily trains sometimes ran as long as forty cars.