Railroads and the American People

2. Stations

95 Buildings It would be during the “Demonstration Period,” roughly the 1830s and 1840s, that the railroad station evolved. At the dawn of intercity railroads, officials did not fret much about depot design or construction, instead concentrating on tracks, bridges, and other physical aspects of their new lines. Recruiting reliable workers and making plans for operations and expansion also consumed time. An upstart carrier might use or modify an existing structure convenient to its tracks to serve as a depot. When in 1830 the gestating Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) reached Ellicott’s Mills (now Ellicott City), Maryland, 13 miles west of its starting point on Pratt Street in Baltimore, the company decided that passengers should wait in the nearby Patapsco Hotel. When the B&O a year later extended its original stem in Baltimore the short distance to the Inner Harbor, the Three Tuns Tavern served as the depot. Railroad officials believed that travelers could fend for themselves. This had been the experience of stagecoach riders, as operators infrequently owned station facilities; rather, proprietors of hotels, stores, and taverns provided shelter and services . Yet eventually the B&O felt the need to build a structure at Ellicott’s Millstoaccommodateandprotectshipmentsoffreight.Latertherailroad erected a depot designed for passengers, and Baltimore likewise received enhanced passenger facilities. Throughout the pre–Civil War period, and occasionally thereafter, railroads utilized for their station existing structures like the Patapsco Hotel and the Three Tuns Tavern. What seemed like an easy, inexpensive solution to the “depot problem,” however, could have unintended consequences . Take the Housatonic Railroad, which served the Housatonic River valley in western Connecticut. When surveyors located the line in the early 1840s, the hotel proprietor, Sylvanus Merwin, and his wife, at Merwinsville(laterGaylordsville)winedanddinedthesemenattheirestablishment ,ahandsomethree-storyframebuildingwithitsnine-column 2 STATIONS
R a i l r o a d s a n d t h e A m e r i c a n P e o p l e 96 Georgian exterior. When the company built through the area, tracks not surprisingly passed next to the hotel. After the arrival of the iron horse, the wife became the village’s first agent, but apparently she lacked the requisite skills. Her inability to manage train movements led to a serious accident. The railroad fired her and sent a replacement, a decision that incensed the couple. When the new agent announced his presence, the hotelproprietoraskedsarcastically,“Didyoubringyourdepotwithyou?” The Housatonic had no choice but to build its own structure, albeit only a few steps from the hotel. Carriers came to prefer control of these trackside buildings, and once their financial health improved, they could more likely erect such facilities . Yet for the short term, existing structures remained that viable option .In1856directorsoftheEastTennessee&VirginiaRailroadaccepted the request of Henry Johnson, resident of the Brush Creek, Tennessee, to “install a depot and water station” in his community. But before the railroad would build a depot, he needed to “furnish the necessary building A railroad, including this unidentified carrier in Pennsylvania, might select an existing building, perhaps a hotel, store, or house, for its station needs. When a company gained financial strength, it likely built its own depot or remodeled the original structure. Author’s coll. s tat i o n s 97 free of charge for depositing the mails, for passenger and freight.” This Johnson did, providing space in his “stone house dwelling.” When railroads erected their own depots, what emerged by the 1880s was a popular design. This was the single-story combination depot that comfortably (and inexpensively) served the needs of most smaller communities . This concept provided space for an agent’s office (usually located in the center with a protruding bay window that faced trackside), waiting room, and freight section. The combination type was commonly built to a standardized plan createdbyrailroadpersonnel,allowingforconvenience,flexibilityofconstruction , and reasonable cost. Sizes varied widely by road. For example, several combination depots built by the Lake Erie & Western Railroad in the late nineteenth century featured these dimensions: 57'6" × 18'6" building with a 24'-long freight room, 18'-long central office, and 15'6"– long waiting room. In 1900 the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway (Milwaukee Road) created for a dozen or so of its smaller stations an 18' × 36' depot that provided an 18'-long freight room, 10'-long central office and a somewhat cut-up waiting room that had an 18'-long side. The Minneapolis , St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (Soo Line) showed that it was easy to expand the footprint of...