Poughkeepsie station is a Metro-North Railroad and Amtrak stop serving the city of Poughkeepsie, New York. The station is the northern terminus of Metro-North's Hudson Line, and an intermediate stop for Amtrak's several Empire Corridor trains.
Built in 1918, the main station building is meant to be a much smaller version of Grand Central Terminal. It was a source of civic pride when it opened. In 1976 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Poughkeepsie Railroad Station; it and Philipse Manor are the only Hudson Line stations outside Manhattan to be so recognized.
Station layout
thumb|left|upright=0.7|Waiting room
The station is a four-story building built into a rockface, with the bottom two levels given over to the tracks and the top two accounted for by the main waiting room, a two-story brick-faced building. Its five-bay facade features sculptured masonry designs over the five high arched windows. To the west, a 420x15-foot (128x5 m) steel-frame overhead walkway provides access to the tracks via stairs and elevators. Today it continues westward to provide access to the adjacent parking garage. At the time of the station's construction, it served the businesses along Main Street.
History
thumb|left|Poughkeepsie station around 1890
thumb|left|The station building in 2006
The first Poughkeepsie station was built in 1850 as what became the New York Central Railroad's Water Level Route worked its way up the Hudson River. For its first two years it was the end of the line, but even after it was completed all the way to Albany, it remained the most important intermediate stop. Many local industries, particularly the carpet mills and shoe factories in the city, used the rail facilities to get their products to market. The concentration of industry around a major rail stop also led to the rise of banking and finance within the city as well.