Central Terminal’s clock returned to concourse for 80th birthday bash
When John Hajduk’s family picked up his grandma from the train station in the 1960s, they met her at the clock.
And when Ben Hiltz left for Army boot camp in 1964, he met the “guy with the tickets” at the clock.
It was the common phrase at Buffalo’s Central Terminal during the station’s heyday.
“Meet me at the clock,” said Hiltz, 67, a Town of Tonawanda resident who has spent the past five years cleaning up the dilapidated building. “It’s something that everyone remembers.”
Central Terminal curators last week returned the original four-sided timepiece to the main concourse for the building’s 80th birthday party, scheduled Saturday. Fifteen feet tall under a nearly 60-foot ceiling, the chipped and repainted relic doesn’t change much, those involved admit. But supporters of renovating Buffalo’s once-stately train station said they hope the addition will help the city reclaim its past.
“It will be another one of those projects that people said will never get done,” Hiltz said. “We gotta kick ’em and say, ‘You’re wrong.’ ”
The clock, originally purchased and restored in 2005 through a $25,000 grant from M&T Bank and fundraising by WBEN radio, spent the past four years in M&T’s downtown headquarters. Its move back to the terminal is the latest step in trying to restore the station that once handled 2,000 people an hour as a hub of the New York Central Railroad, said Michael Miller, president of the Central Terminal Restoration Corp.
Amtrak abandoned the building in 1979, and since then a string of owners, looters and graffiti artists have reduced the station to a windowless marble shell.
As Hiltz dropped off storage cabinets for construction tools Tuesday, the only thing moving in the main concourse was a pigeon perched on top of the “K” in the baggage check sign.
Although some have said the restoration efforts are a “pipe dream” that would squander taxpayer dollars, the incremental progress is meant to show the project is possible, Miller said.
“It’s a way to mark their time, if you will,” said Catherine Schweitzer, chairwoman of Preservation Buffalo Niagara. “To be able to put the original clock back in the terminal is a symbol that will look back with people’s memories, and as you look forward, it’s a symbol of hope.”
Since Miller’s group bought the building for $1 in 1997, most of the garbage has been removed, the concourse’s windows have been boarded up, and the roof has been replaced.
Event organizers Saturday will showcase repainted signs, new railings and, of course, the clock.
But Miller admits there would need to be a huge influx of cash, either through government grants or deep pockets, to make the building usable. Ideas floated for the future of the building include a high-speed rail hub or mixed use, and studies have shown renovation would cost anywhere from $100 million to $150 million, Miller said. Demolition would cost between $10 million and $20 million.
The revamp could probably be done for less, but the city has more pressing issues, said Carl Paladino, CEO of Ellicott Development Co.
“We have people in this city that can’t eat. We have 10,000 buildings that need to be torn down,” said Paladino, who supports the project. “You have to address the other priorities if you’re going to have a practical use for the building. Then people will go into the inner-city and feel safe there.”
Hajduk, 50, who spent Tuesday afternoon showing his niece and nephew where he used to pick his grandma up, said it might be a long shot, but it’s worth a try.
“I don’t know if it’d do anything by itself,” said Hajduk, now a historian at the University of Montana Western. “But if you get the ball rolling . . . you’d hope that it’d make Buffalo a place where people come to see good architecture.”
At the very least, Saturday’s ’40s-themed bash, which includes entertainment from big bands and jazz ensembles, is a chance to throw a party, Hiltz said. “You give it a helluva poke,” he said. “We want people to come and remember.”
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