Over the last three years, Albany’s historic depot of the Oregon Electric Railway has been restored, remodeled and expanded for its next role in the community’s life.
Matt and Janel Bennett, owners of the Sybaris restaurant downtown, bought the former railroad station at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Lyon Street in May 2022. A year or so later, they had engaged Pyburn and Sons to turn the building into the new home for their restaurant.
The rail depot was opened in 1912, when the Oregon Electric Railway reached Albany. For the century after that, it served first as the railroad’s passenger terminal and later as a county-owned veterans’ hall, and finally as Ciddici’s pizza and state lottery parlor…