Peace Dale Railroad Station

This and the Kingston Railroad Station ( SK38) are the popular images of what country Victorian railroad stations should be. Minus its tracks and abandoned, the little station retains it parasol roof supported on all four sides by elaborate bracketing. In the manner categorized as Stick Style, its display of wooden structure, partly functional, partly fanciful, is really a vernacularization of mid-century Gothic, crossed perhaps with some inspiration from Swiss chalets. The station was locally referred to as the Narragansett Pier station, named for the railroad rather than the village. The Hazards were primary backers of this spur from Kingston Station on the main New York–Boston line. It stopped at Peace Dale, Wakefield, and Narragansett Pier, providing connections for the Hazards' mill to rail lines at one end and shipping at the other, where the family owned one of the principal piers. It was this line, too, that vacationers took for over a century to Narragansett Pier, where Hazards owned much of the land. The first passenger run occurred on July 18, 1876, the last in 1951; the tracks were abandoned in 1955. Old photographs show the station mobbed by villagers in their Sunday best, headed for the beach two stations away.