Wellesley Farms Railroad Station

In 1885, the Boston & Albany Railroad commissioned Henry Hobson Richardson to design a railroad station for Wellesley Hills, the last of nine stations he created for the line. Badly altered on the street side for new commercial uses, the Wellesley Hills Railroad Station is a low hipped-roof rectangle with a higher cross gable and two circular projections on the track side. Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, Richardson's successor firm, designed the Wellesley Farms Railroad Station in 1894, modeling it closely after earlier Richardson designs for the Eliot (1884–1888, demolished) and Woodland (see NW6; 1884–1886) stations in Newton. Although the interior was destroyed by fire in 1969, the Wellesley Farms station continues to serve as a railroad shelter and displays the characteristic Richardsonian use of rough-faced granite with brownstone trim on a compact mass covered by a deep-hipped roof. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted collaborated with his friend Richardson (and the successor firm) on several projects. Wellesley Farms is the best surviving example of the Olmsted railroad projects, with the entrance drive curving around a pond ornamented by red oaks, white pines, forsythia, and rhododendrons.