ROUNDHOUSE
- Program
- Subject
- Location
- Lat/Long
- Grant Recipient
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Historic Transportation
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Building, Site, Transportation
- 76 Merrick Cir, Manchester, NY 14504, USA
- 42.964753, -77.233588
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Village of Manchester New York
ROUNDHOUSE
Inscription
ROUNDHOUSEBUILT 1916 BY LEHIGH
VALLEY RAILROAD TO STORE AND
MAINTAIN LOCOMOTIVES. SERVED
MANCHESTER FREIGHT TRANSFER
YARD UNTIL 1972.
WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2025
In 1916, the Lehigh Valley Railroad built a roundhouse to serve their freight transfer yard located in Manchester in Ontario County, New York. The Lehigh Valley Railroad stretched throughout the northeast and was built to carry anthracite coal (History of the Lehigh Valley Railroad by Robert F. Archer, 1977). The construction of the roundhouse in Manchester in 1916 was part of an improvement project to modernize and enlarge the Manchester yard at a time when the railroad was undertaking intensive development across its facilities. The new roundhouse was used to store and maintain locomotives. In addition to the roundhouse, the railroad built a new machine shop, boiler, engine and oil houses, office building, and built an electric power plant to power the machinery and lights in the yard. There were also considerable adjustments to track arrangements at the time, and the addition of a coal trestle and 100-foot turntable.
The Manchester roundhouse served the freight transfer yard until 1972, when the yard was abandoned by the railroad. With declining traffic over the previous several years, the railroad had begun phasing out the yard in the late 1960s. In July 1970, only ten out of 50 workers employed by the railroad at the Manchester yard were spared from layoffs. At the time, it was reported that four years prior, the yard had employed about 125 workers (Daily Messenger, July 8, 1970, 1) showing the significant decline that had occurred in a relatively short timeframe. By October 1972, all operations there had ceased (Daily Messenger, October 30, 1972, 3).
The Manchester roundhouse serves as a vestige of this significant aspect of transportation history and the development of the surrounding area. In acknowledgement of this significance, in 2018, the Preservation League of NYS designated the roundhouse as one of its “Seven to Save.” As of 2024, the Village of Manchester is working to ensure the preservation of this historical structure.