The Alexandria Train Station HAS SURVIVED SINCE 1895, going through two wars and an earthquake, without time or calamities affecting its facade. The location of the station is the only building in town looking the same even after a century since its founding.
Same as all of the other streets in Alexandria, it was designed by Austrian Otto von Moritz, who made the town plans. On the train station street there were the most important institutions in Alexandria’s first years of existence. Here was where city hall, the polyclinic, the post office and the train station were. Here was also where the walking street for the town’s elite was for years. It is said that officers, intelectuals and the most important people in town went out in the evenings for walks under the scent of the locust trees making the street prettier.
61 years since the founding of Alexandria, the town’s train station appeared. The railroad was created for economic reasons to directly connect the town to the most southern point of the country, Zimnicea. The expropriation procedures from land owners where the station was going to be built lasted over two years. The station construction required the breaking of a street and changin the initial architecture of the city. The station was inaugurated in 1895, becoming the number one building of the street that was named Gării (station) street for years. After 118 years since its foundation, the station remains the only consatruction in town whose look has not changed almost at all. The building where the station functions today has been through two wars but was shielded from the bombings. The earthquake did not shake the building either. The exterior as well as the interior of the building keep the sam features as 118 years ago, from the shape of the windows to the air shafts. Even the brick which is said to have been brought all the way from Italy on the day of its construction, has remained the same. The building became a historical monument, by the decision of the Ministry of culture, being the few monuments of the kind in the county residence.
In 2011, the train station in Alexandria, together with some other few CFR stations in the country, was included in a restoration program with European funds.
Aside from the station, on Alexandru Colfescu street there are six other historical monuments, private old houses over 100 years old that belonged to landowners in Alexandria. The Marin Stoica house, The Cătălin Borţun house, The Ţole house, The Zarzără house, The Ulmeanu house and the Mocanu house are among the oldest buildings in the city, that still last after over a century.
