Evans City Historical Society soon to purchase old trolley station
EVANS CITY — A piece of Western Pennsylvania’s transportation history is in the process of being preserved for future generations.
At Evans City’s monthly council meeting on Wednesday night, July 5, mayor Dean Zinkhann revealed that the Evans City Historical Society is close to sealing the deal to purchase the town’s former trolley depot, which has been disused for nearly a century.
“We’re working with an agreement with an attorney to buy that and purchase that,” Zinkhann said. “We got an appraisal on that, and our authority at the historical society said, ‘Go for it.’”
The building, which once housed the trolley depot, is located directly across the street from the Evans City library/police station/municipal building, and is currently home to a pair of apartments. The landlords and current owners of the property are looking to sell.
At one point, the building was home to a driveway sealing business.
The Evans City station served the Pittsburgh, Mars and Butler Railway, a 118-mile streetcar line which stretched from New Castle in the north to Pittsburgh in the south. The station was erected some time in the 1900s and stayed open until 1931, the year the line ceased operation.
By the early 1930s, both the Great Depression and the rise of the automobile spelled doom for the trolley line. The former station building passed through several different owners in the interim decades before being purchased by its current owners, the Basilone family.
According to property records, the building has been in the hands of the Basilone family since 1999.
Although the trolley lines have long since been torn out of the road, the historical society is hoping to restore the old building to its former state and turn it into a trolley museum.
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