Mamaroneck’s stately brick train station, which just a few years ago was suffering from serious decay, was reborn Wednesday evening as a restaurant, lounge and office space.
A crowd of residents and local officials turned out for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tour converted station.
(Photo of the newly renovated Mamaroneck Train Station, now home to Club Car Restauant and Lounge, by Ned P. Rauch/The Journal News.)
John and Chris Verni, brothers who live in New Rochelle and Larchmont, respectively, and are in the restoration business, bought the old building from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2008. Over the following years, they brought it back to life.
“Too often, great buildings like this are torn down,” John Verni said.
They preserved and restored what they could, saving, for example, the main hall’s original fire place and stained-glass windows, and modernized wherever applicable. What had been one massive space now has two floors: the restaurant, Club Car, run by chef Brian MacMenamin, downstairs, and Verco’s offices upstairs.
“You’d walk in here and say, ‘What a shame they let it go,’” Village Trustee Sid Albert said Wednesday evening, recalling the station’s condition before the renovation. “You could see the potential of what it could be, and they brought it back.”
“I think it’s absolutely phenomenal,” he added.
We’ll have more on the new old station, which was built in 1888, in an upcoming edition of the Sound Shore Express.
