New_Terminal_Depot_at_Philadelphia_LOC_01533v

A head house or headhouse may be an enclosed building attached to an open-sided shed, or the aboveground part of a subway station.

Markets

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, head houses were often civic buildings such as town halls or

courthouses A courthouse or court house is a building that is home to a local court of law and often the regional county government as well, although this is not the case in some larger cities. The term is common in North America. In most other English-sp ...

located at the end of an open market shed; one example is the former market and firehouse from which Philadelphia's

Head House Square New Market, as it was originally known, and later also known as Head House (or Headhouse) Market and Second Street Market, is a historic street market on South 2nd Street between Pine and Lombard Streets in the Society Hill neighborhood of Phil ...

takes its name.

Mines

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

, a headhouse is the housing of the headworks of various types of machinery used for moving coal to the surface, or men to or from it.

Transportation

Railroads

Since the mid-19th century, in the United States, a head house has often been the part of a passenger

train station A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing suc ...

that does not house the tracks and platforms. Elsewhere, the same part of a station is known as the

station building A station building, also known as a head house, is the main building of a passenger railway station. It is typically used principally to provide services to passengers. A station building is a component of a station, which can include tracks, p ...

. In particular, it often contains the ticket counters,

waiting room A waiting room or waiting hall is a building, or more commonly a part of a building or a room, where people sit or stand until the event or appointment for which they are waiting begins. There are two types of waiting room. One has individuals ...

s, toilets and baggage facilities. It might also include the passenger concourses and walkways between the platforms and other facilities. The head house at Philadelphia's

Reading Terminal The Reading Terminal ( ) is a complex of buildings that includes the former Reading Company main station located in the Market East section of Center City in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It comprises the Reading Terminal Headho ...

, which fronts a two level shed with tracks and platforms placed above a covered market, combined both the older and newer meanings of the word. Larger terminals had amenities that were contained within their own distinct building, which was separate from the railroad. For instance, when

Cincinnati Union Terminal Cincinnati Union Terminal is an intercity train station and museum center in the Queensgate, Cincinnati, Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Commonly abbreviated as CUT, or by its Amtrak station code, CIN, the Railroad terminal, termina ...

opened in 1933, the head house held a restaurant, lunch room, ice cream shop, news agent, drug store, small movie theater, men's and women's lounges, and restrooms that included changing rooms and showers.

Subways

In subway systems, a head house is the part of a subway station that is above ground, which contain escalators, elevators and ticket agents. On the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

, a head house is called a "Control House". They were built, and are still used in certain locations (such as at Broadway and West 72nd Street), where a simple staircase or kiosk was not desirable. During the design and construction of the city's original subway line opened by the

Interborough Rapid Transit Company The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) was the private operator of New York City's original underground subway line that opened in 1904, as well as earlier elevated railways and additional rapid transit lines in New York City. The IRT w ...

(IRT) in 1904, control houses were treated as integral architectural features of the system. In 1901,

William Barclay Parsons William Barclay Parsons (April 15, 1859 – May 9, 1932) was an American civil engineer. He founded Parsons Brinckerhoff, one of the largest American civil engineering firms. Personal life Parsons was the son of William Barclay Parsons (1828– ...

, chief engineer for the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners, had traveled to

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

with architect Christopher LaFarge, where he was apparently inspired by the ornamental houses he saw used as entrances to the

Tremont Street subway The Tremont Street subway in Boston's MBTA subway system is the oldest subway tunnel in North America and the third oldest still in use worldwide to exclusively use electric traction (after the City and South London Railway in 1890, and the Bud ...

. In response, architects

Heins & LaFarge Heins & LaFarge was a New York-based architectural firm composed of the Philadelphia-born architect George Lewis Heins (1860–1907) and Christopher Grant LaFarge (1862–1938), the eldest son of the artist John La Farge. They were respons ...

designed each IRT control house to be an attractive exterior feature of the transit network system that was in keeping with its location. The buildings, which are examples of the Beaux-Arts style, are similar to other ground-level structures on the IRT, such as the powerhouses and sub-stations.

References