Nassau

The Nassau station was a Staten Island Railway station located roughly between the neighborhoods of Tottenville (to the south) and Charleston (to the north), in Staten Island, New York. The station was built sometime after 1924 in order to serve the Nassau Smelting & Refining Company, and had a siding so that freight could be transferred to and from the factory. The station platforms were extended in 1971 as part of the modernization of the rail line. However, the condition of the station deteriorated after the 1990s, and this station, along with the Atlantic station to the south, were replaced by a new station at Arthur Kill Road. When that station opened in January 2017, Nassau station closed. The station was subsequently demolished. History Nassau station opened sometime after 1924, over sixty years after the 1860 opening of the Staten Island Railway from Annadale to Tottenville. The station was named after and built to serve the nearby Nassau Smelting & Refining Company, which was located directly to the west of the southbound platform. The station allowed workers of the company easy transportation access while also providing freight service to the company via a rail siding located to the west of the southbound platform. The factory opened in 1882 as the Tottenville Copper Works and changed its name in 1931 to the Nassau Smelting & Refining Company. As a subsidiary of Bell Telephone System's Western Electric division, the factory recycled obsolete telephone equipment and manufactured copper wire and solder. It would later be called AT&T Nassau Metals. For more than 20 years, the site was a vacant brownfield, until the land was cleaned up in 2007 and became environmentally safe for future development. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority purchased and gained control of the Staten Island Rapid Transit in 1971, and started to modernize the rail line. In 1971, the station platforms were extended to as part of the improvements program. The extensions were funded in part by the Nassau Smelting Plant. The station extension was built on timber covered with asphalt, and was located to the east of the original platforms. The stations on the line were modernized again in the 1990s, with the exception of Nassau, and the nearby Atlantic station, which also was built to serve a factory. Instead, these two stations were set to be replaced with a station in between the two at Arthur Kill Road.