Winthrop Beach Depot- still there?
Gary asks, "This depot has been reported as still standing, at the corner of Washington & Shirley Sts. Confirmation? "
Okey-doke. Let's check it out.
Here is a blow-up of the image he has to go with the query...
Pretty neat. I was intrigued, and wondered if I could spot anything, using my favorite new tool, "Google Street View", with it's companion, "Google Satellite".
This station was on the Boston, Revere Beach, and Lynne Narrow Gauge line. This railroad had lots of stations, a confusing history, and was entirely abandoned in 1940. It's a line with lots of possibility for extant depots in my opinion.
The first step was to identify the exact location of the depot site, made all the more easy because the question contains an intersection of two streets. Before long I came to realize that the intersection in question isn't quite right, the depot site being a block away.
Here's what I found online. (And again, let me say- I love this virtual depot hunting deal.)
The building at left is the same in both images. (Interesting to note how the utility poles on the right still have the same configuration today.) The depot site is roughly where that orange roof is today.
At first, there was a building down there which looked rather promising.
Upon further inspection however, it was too new, didn't fit the vintage photo, and wasn't quite in the right place. Before long I realized that "Veterans Street" in Winthrop is actually ON the Right-Of-Way of the railroad. (I've come to realize there are a lot of roads that were built right after WWII on top of old roadbeds, often named after something from the war. "General So-and-So Highway", or "VFW Boulevard", something along those lines.)
I realized the exact spot was here, at the corner of Veterans and Washington...
First of all, I must say that Winthrop must have been a nicer place back when the vintage postcard was made. Yeesh.
Here is some proof that this is the spot in question:
Another vintage shot of the same place, this time from the opposite direction...
Notice the three-story building in the background, as well as the building next to the depot at far left. Here is what it looks like today using Google...
And then moving slightly so you can see the details on the building at left so it's not blocked by that small tree..
And because I spent a lot of time checking this out, I'll show you a couple of other comparisons to vintage views.
Another image from around 1905...
Note the 3-decker at left. (The building I pointed out the roof line and window of has not yet been constructed in this view.) Now see what it looks like today from the same vantage...
The green arrow points to the same 3-decker today. So there's no doubt about it. The spot matches exactly and alas, that crummy tan garage is all that remains at the site. (I betcha the people who work there today have no idea how magnificent the spot once looked, or what it's former significance was.)
But I did find one really interesting vestige of the Revere Beach, and Lynne. See that red truck above? Well, if it kept going straight ahead it would go down the former ROW, which is today an odd little street that leads to a marina. It was here that the old rail line once went out on a very, very long stretch out over the water. Shortly after it went out into the ocean, it made a sharp curve to the west, then ran out in the ocean for quite a ways on a wooden trestle, before coming back onto dry land and heading north, forming a big loop around Winthrop.
There is a great deal of this curve still visible today from space...
Here it is from a 1903 topo map...
I've saved the best for last. Here is a vintage image from around 1905 of a train actually on the Curve...
So to answer the original question, "This depot has been reported as still standing, at the corner of Washington & Shirley Sts. Confirmation? "
Yes. I can confirm that it's very much "gone", and that in it's place one can today find a grubby tan garage and not much else. BUT- that neat section of former Right-Of-Way known as "The Curve" is surprisingly still there. Just don't anyone try to hike it today past where it goes out of view in the above postcard without a bathing suit. :-)