Texas & Pacific Railroad Depot

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Texas and Pacific Railroad Depot in Taylor County. Pull up a chair, because this one starts the way a lot of Texas stories do: with a train rolling in where there wasn't much of anything before. The railroad arrived in Abilene in 1881, and the very first depot wasn't a depot at all.

It was a railroad car. Just sitting there on the tracks, doing its best. That was the whole operation.

But Abilene had ambitions, and by 1882 a proper two-story structure had gone up, with a passenger waiting room, office space, dining, and a hotel on the second floor. Not bad for a town that had just greeted its first locomotive. That two-story building held on for a while, but nothing lasts forever out on the West Texas plains.

By 1902, it had been replaced with a one-story wood building. One story. Wood.

Now, wood is fine, but the people of Abilene were not satisfied, and they let the railroad know it. Growing public efforts, the marker says, and you can imagine what that looked like: petitions, meetings, folks leaning across counters and making their feelings plain. It worked.

In 1907, the Texas and Pacific Railroad announced a plan to erect a new depot. A real one. Construction began in May 1910, and what they built was something worth writing home about.

Brick and concrete, a tile roof, mission revival and prairie school influences blending together in what the marker calls an eclectic mix. One story, rectangular, but don't let that fool you into thinking it was plain. There was a hipped tile roof with gabled dormers.

A projecting gable over the north First Street entrance. An octagonal tower sitting opposite that entrance. Red brick walls rising up over a battered stucco base, all the way to a molded cornice, with corner quoins and a stringcourse and decorative details at the dormers done in stucco or cast stone.

And the windows, the windows originally had multi-light upper sashes with a row of diamond panes at the top. Diamond panes. Someone wanted this building to be remembered.

And then came March 14, 1911. Thousands of people gathered at this depot to hear former President Theodore Roosevelt speak. Thousands.

Right here in Abilene. Whatever you think about the building before that moment, from that day forward it was the kind of place where history had shown up in person. The years rolled on, the way they do.

In 1936, the Works Progress Administration built a section of elevated track with concrete underpasses and passenger stairs to track level. In 1947, the open freight bay was enclosed. In 1953, the dormers were removed from the main roof and from the tower.

The building changed shape over time, the way old buildings do when they're still being used and the world keeps asking new things of them. The passenger terminal closed in 1984. Seven years later, in 1991, the depot was donated to the city of Abilene.

And the city, working in partnership with the Dodge Jones Foundation, completely restored it. It reopened in 1994. A railroad car.

Then a two-story hotel-and-dining-room combination. Then a one-story wood building nobody was happy about. Then this, brick and tile and diamond panes and an octagonal tower, the kind of place a former president would stop to speak, the kind of place a whole city would fight to save.

Abilene knew what it had, and in the end, it held on.

What the marker says

With the arrival of the railroad in Abilene in 1881, a railroad car was used as the first depot. In 1882, a two-story structure was built consisting of a passenger waiting room, office space, dining and a hotel on the second floor. Located a few blocks from here, the depot was replaced with a one-story wood building in 1902. In response to growing public efforts, the Texas & Pacific Railroad announced in 1907 a plan to erect a new depot. Construction began in May 1910 and included a brick and concrete building with a tile roof. The Texas & Pacific Railroad Depot is a rectangular, one-story building displaying an eclectic blend of mission revival and prairie school influences. Surmounted by a hipped tile roof with gabled dormers, the depot features a projecting gable over the north first street entrance, opposite an octagonal tower. Over a battered stucco base, the red brick walls rise to a molded cornice, with corner quoins, stringcourse and decorative details at the dormers executed in stucco or cast stone. The windows originally had multi-light upper sashes with a row of diamond panes at the top. On March 14, 1911, thousands of people gathered to hear former President Theodore Roosevelt speak. In 1936, the works progress administration built a section of elevated track with concrete underpasses with passenger stairs to track level. The depot open freight bay was enclosed in 1947 and the dormers were removed from the main roof and tower in 1953. The passenger terminal closed in 1984 and the depot was donated to the city of Abilene in 1991. The city, in partnership with the Dodge Jones Foundation, completely restored the depot and it reopened in 1994. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK - 2016