You’re looking at a long set of train tracks flanked by platforms with low, brown-roofed station houses and Garden City signs-you can spot the station right in front of you next to the parking lots and under the web of power lines.
Imagine-you’re standing where travelers have arrived for over a century, since 1872, when Garden City station first welcomed visitors on the Hempstead Branch. Back then, things were a bit more grand: the station boasted a fancy Victorian style, with a second story set above the front door and a generous back porch overlooking high, wooden platforms. Alexander Turney Stewart, who dreamed up both the Garden City Hotel and much of the village itself, built this stop to lure visitors straight to his luxury hotel across the street. You could say he was all about first-class arrivals! Over the years, railway companies married and merged like a complicated soap opera-the Central Railroad of Long Island joined up with the Flushing and North Side, and then the Long Island Rail Road swept them all under its wing in 1876.
The station itself had some clever upgrades as times changed. In 1898, it got a makeover: eyebrow windows peeked over the roof, and trolley cars would rattle by connecting you to other towns. By 1915, even a pedestrian tunnel made its debut-no more dashing in front of trolleys! The platforms rose higher in the 1970s, and a more recent restoration has given the whole area a fresh sweep. With two station houses, the Garden City station is something of a local railway oddity-like a train station with a split personality.
Even as shiny cars fill the parking lots and the platforms hum with commuters, the ghosts of Victorian travelers, trolley bells, and hotel porters with heavy trunks still linger in the air. If your suitcase feels lighter, maybe Stewart’s old porters are still lending a hand!
