Ahead house orheadhouse may be an enclosed building attached to an open-sided shed, including the piers extending into a waterway, or the aboveground part of a train or subway station.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, head houses were often civic buildings such astown halls orcourthouses located at the end of an open market shed; one example is theformer market and firehouse from which Philadelphia'sHead House Square takes its name.
Inmining, a headhouse is the housing of the headworks of various types of machinery used for moving coal to the surface, or men to or from it.
Since the mid-19th century, in the United States, a head house has often been the part of a passengertrain station that does not house the tracks and platforms. Elsewhere, the same part of a station is known as thestation building.
In particular, it often contains the ticket counters,waiting rooms, toilets and baggage facilities. It might also include the passenger concourses and walkways between the platforms and other facilities. The head house at Philadelphia'sReading Terminal, which fronts a two level shed with tracks and platforms placed above a covered market, combined both the older and newer meanings of the word.
Larger terminals had amenities that were contained within their own distinct building, which was separate from the railroad. For instance, whenCincinnati Union Terminal opened in 1933, the head house held a restaurant, lunch room, ice cream shop, news agent, drug store, small movie theater, men's and women's lounges, and restrooms that included changing rooms and showers.[1]
Insubway systems, a head house is the part of a subway station that is above ground, which contain escalators, elevators and ticket agents.
On theNew York City Subway, a head house is called a "Control House". They were built, and are still used in certain locations (such as atBroadway and West 72nd Street), where a simple staircase or kiosk was not desirable. During the design and construction of thecity's original subway line opened by theInterborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in 1904, control houses were treated as integral architectural features of the system. In 1901,William Barclay Parsons, chief engineer for the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners, had traveled toBoston with architectChristopher LaFarge, where he was apparently inspired by the ornamental houses he saw used as entrances to theTremont Street subway.[2] In response, architectsHeins & LaFarge designed each IRT control house to be an attractive exterior feature of the transit network system that was in keeping with its location. The buildings, which are examples of theBeaux-Arts style, are similar to other ground-level structures on the IRT, such as thepowerhouses and sub-stations.