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In the very early 20th Century, Concord’s railroad station greeted more than 30 passenger trains a day. A Concord Coach was displayed in the waiting room; a nod to the Capital City’s long-standing role as a center for cutting-edge transportation.

That mammoth, ornate station near the Merrimack River had been built in 1885, designed by the legendary Bradford L. Gilbert, who also designed New York City’s Grand Central Station. Photos and renderings of it reveal a four-storied complex of towering red brick rooted in native granite and surrounded by a complex of tracks and supporting structures. By 1960, the station had been demolished and was being replaced by a shopping center and parking lot. Contrasting the glory of what stood before with the mundanity of what is now a Burlington Store and the sprawling strip mall on Storrs Street is one of the most fervent laments heard from our state’s preservationist community. Mid-century plans for urban renewal were intended to excite our economy, clearing the old to make way for the new. Even if we knew then what we know now, it might just not have been feasible to keep things as they were, but it’s hard to overlook what such an architectural treasure would have meant for Concord’s recent downtown overhaul. Like the carpet that “ties the room together” in “The Big Lebowski,” the railroad station could have made Concord’s preservation efforts into a priceless, essential part of the city’s future. So I was both pleased and a bit bemused to learn another historic Concord structure, less humongous but equally symbolic of older times, has finally been both saved from the wrecking ball and stabilized until plans can be made for what to actually do with it. The ingloriously named Concord Gasholder is a round, brick structure with a shingled roof that stands near I-93 and next to railway tracks that still run through Concord. It originally stored gas produced from coal and kept it under a massive “cap” that provided pressure to supply it to homes for lighting and cooking. It was the state of the art for such systems at the time and gasholders were not uncommon, but the conversion to modern fuels turned them all into hazardous eyesores. The majority have disappeared and only Concord’s building still possesses the original mechanism for holding and distributing the gas, making it into an object of great interest to ... hmm ... gas-holder historians, I guess. I’m being unfair to make a point. One could argue (and many have) that the million-dollars-plus required to preserve the gasholder is a frivolous expense, but “history” to a community is like old photos or heirlooms to a family. In a house fire or flood, it’s just those objects that we run back inside to save. Why? Because history is what we are made of. When we preserve it, we are actually preserving our sense of self, our shared realities and values. Way back in 1976, Robert Vogel, then a curator for the Smithsonian, wrote a local businessperson to implore, “If you have any influence with the local utility, please do what you can to convince them that the circular gasholder house at the south end of town is a valuable historic resource and attractive visual element in the cityscape. It should not be demolished, as apparently they plan, but preserved and adaptively used.” Plans for how the gasholder will benefit the city or the neighbors are still being formulated, but it could become a pedestrian-friendly element in a redevelopment of that corridor and neighborhood. Or it might stand as the highly visible focal point of a new park or series of walking trails. Christmas is our annual reminder of the importance of gifts and giving.Whatever happens next to the Concord Gasholder, I’m sure that citizens and tourists cruising by in their flying cars someday will be grateful that, way back in 2022, someone thought enough of them to purchase them such a lovely present.