Seaboard Airline Railway Station, West Palm Beach Florida

Date added: September 21, 2018 Categories: Florida Train Station Passenger Station
1972 EAST FACADE, VIEW FROM THE NORTHEAST

Henry M. Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad Line reached Palm Beach in 1894. The Seaboard Airline Railroad Line laid tracks to Palm Beach as late as 1921-1924. It was after 1921 that the Seaboard Airline tracks reached West Palm Beach. Reference to the Seaboard Airline Railroad Station appears in a book printed in 1926. S. Davis Warfield was president of Seaboard Air Line and in 1924 Warfield built a cross-state line which serviced West Palm Beach and Miami and Homestead in 1926,making a direct rail connection from one coast to the other, across the state. In 1938 the Atlantic Coast Line and the Seaboard Airline Railroad Line formed a network over Florida. Trains were air-conditioned, and streamlined, and power was generated by Diesel-electric locomotives.

Stockholders in the railroad were important Palm Beach residents, and this station combined their taste in architecture, and their desire for service and convenience, for the community related to their vacation and retirement residences.

L. Phillips Clarke, who designed all of the Seaboard Railroad stations, built his first station at Auburndale. The West Palm Beach station appeared in 1924-1925.

The north-south dimension, paralleling the tracks, is approximately 178 feet. It is 43 feet deep, not including (at the sides) a 13 foot platform on the west. The building is mainly one story high, with a single office in a two-story level near the center and a three-stage tower on the south corner of the east or entrance facade on Tamarind Avenue.

The plan is rectangular, divided essentially in half, with express room and baggage room to the left or south, and behind the loggia the two waiting rooms, now one, separated on the east by rest rooms and on the west by the ticket office. The loggia surrounds most of the front and ends, and the shed-roofed passenger platform on the rear or track side.