Former Passenger Train Station in AR

Rock Island Depot, Carlisle Arkansas

Date added: December 31, 2024

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The Carlisle Rock Island Depot, constructed c. 1920, is an outstanding example of the Tudor Revival architectural style, which became popular during the 1920s in Arkansas for various types of buildings. Rock Island Railroad provided the only direct passenger and cargo service between Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee after 1899. It supported the growth and development of the rice farming town of Carlisle.

The town of Carlisle was founded on August 1^st, 1872, when Samuel McCormick and his wife, L. J. McCormick, made and entered into a bill of assurance wherein as co-owners they laid off into lots and blocks the northwest quarter of Section 22, Township 2 North, Range 7 West of the 5^th principal meridian, and made a plat of the survey. The plat and bill of assurance were then recorded in the Recorder's Office of Prairie County in the state of Arkansas, to be known as the town of Carlisle (one local legend maintains that Mr. McCormick named the town after Carlisle, Pennsylvania, of which he had reputedly been a resident, though another holds that the town was named for a friend who had been a senator in another state). Carlisle became an incorporated community on August 28^th, 1878.

The fledgling Memphis and Little Rock Railroad had laid track between DeVall's Bluff and Huntersville (now North Little Rock) as early as 1862, passing through the area that would later become the town of Carlisle. The Civil War delayed any non-military use of the track for three years and it was not until 1871 that the railroads leading in and out of the Little Rock area began to grow to an appreciable degree. By then, Huntersville had become the terminus of three separate railroads: the Memphis and Little Rock, the Cairo and Fulton (running southwest from Cairo, Illinois to Fulton, Arkansas) and the Little Rock and Fort Smith. By this time, the rail line between Little Rock and Memphis was clearly beginning to take on a more active and permanent cast.

The lasting impact of the railroads on this corridor through eastern Arkansas only became more evident in 1899, when the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad, which had experienced chronic financial and construction setbacks, was purchased by the Choctaw and Memphis Railroad, which by 1904 had become known as the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (commonly known as the Rock Island Railroad). The financial solvency of the Rock Island Railroad allowed it to embark on a campaign of gradual progress and studied expansion throughout the first several decades of the twentieth century, resulting in such new endeavors as the addition of a line from Little Rock to the Louisiana border that accessed the newly-discovered oil reserves and rich agricultural and forest land of south-central Arkansas.

The success of the Rock Island Railroad also resulted in improvements and expansion for their passenger and freight depots. The second decade of the twentieth century saw the erection of handsome brick depots by the Rock Island in the prosperous and growing communities of Argenta and Lonoke; however, communities such as Carlisle, which had yet to experience their peak period of prosperity, continued to be serviced by simpler, wood frame depots.

By 1920, the situation had changed dramatically, largely due to the success of the local rice industry. Incidental planting of rice in the prairie region around Carlisle had begun in the late nineteenth century, but in 1904 William H. Fuller of Lonoke produced the first profitable crop and thus demonstrated to the local farmers that rice farming could be a viable economic endeavor. From then until the First World War the foundation of this agricultural activity, now a mainstay of the Arkansas economy, was laid. The population grew rapidly and new settlement was encouraged by publicity campaigns of the Rock Island Railroad. These efforts succeeded in bringing thousands of immigrants from Illinois and Iowa who had previously emigrated from Germany and who, in addition to settling in existing towns as Carlisle, would found such nearby communities as Slovak and Stuttgart.

The situation was similar in Hazen, approximately 10 miles to the east, which also served as a major debarkation point for new settlers who came to partake of the prosperity offered by the success of rice farming. Thus it is not surprising that both Carlisle and Hazen received new, more architecturally impressive depots to declare the permanence of these communities and shelter the new arrivals. Like the Hazen Depot, the Carlisle Depot is significant both because of its direct connections with the growth and prosperity of the city of Carlisle during the seminal period of the rice industry in eastern Arkansas and because of its status as the best example in the city of Carlisle of the Tudor Revival style. However, its architectural significance is further enhanced by its iconography and the national associations that its Tudor Revival style held for the Germanic and Eastern European immigrants which the railroad so deliberately attempted to court. We may never know whether or not the Railroad's designers were successful; yet it is clear that their intent was for these people to consider the Carlisle Depot as a symbol of home, familiar and welcoming, which told them that this place to which they had come was not so strange and unfriendly.

Building Description

The Carlisle Rock Island Depot is a one-and-one-half story, brick and stucco building designed in the half-timbered Tudor Revival style popular with the Rock Island Railroad in the 1920s. Its intersecting gable roof covers a rectangular plan consisting of a large waiting room for whites toward the western end, a combination ticket window and telegrapher's bay in the center and the black waiting room at the eastern end. A hipped roof, single-story cargo room is attached to the eastern elevation and a hipped roof, single-story waiting area is attached to the western elevation.

Detailed Description

The Carlisle Rock Island Depot is a one-and-one-half story, brick and stucco railroad passenger depot designed in the half-timbered Tudor Revival style popular with the Rock Island Railroad in the 1920s. Its intersecting gable roof covers a fundamentally rectangular plan consisting of two waiting rooms, one each for blacks and whites, flanking the central intersecting 'transept' which formerly sheltered a combination telegrapher's bay and ticket window to the south and a luggage room to the north. Both the cargo room to the east and the open passenger waiting area to the west are covered with hipped roofs. A single interior brick chimney projects from the roofline just to the east of the intersection of the gable roof. The roof is covered with composition shingles, the walls are sheathed with brick and stucco and the entire structure is supported by a continuous cast concrete foundation.

The northern and southern elevations are seven bays in length. Both elevations consist of four bays to the west and two bays to the east, divided by the projecting gable roof bay. The wall to the west of the projecting bay on the northern elevation is fenestrated by three six-over-one wood sash windows and a single-leaf entrance with a six-pane transom; the wall to the east is lighted with two identical windows in the main section and two fixed six-pane wood windows flanking a central cargo door in the single story cargo room. The wall to the west of the projecting bay on the southern elevation is accessed by two single-leaf doors with six-pane transoms flanking two six-over-one wood sash windows; the wall to the east is punctuated by a single-leaf entry and one six-over-one wood sash windows. Two fixed six-pane wood windows flank a large, central cargo door. The projecting bay on the northern elevation is lighted on the upper story by a group of three fixed vertical pane windows, the outermost of which are of three panes and the central of four panes. The lower story is fenestrated with four small, symmetrically-placed, four-over-one wood sash windows. The projecting bay on the southern elevation features windows on the upper story which are identical to those on the bay opposite, and a group of three windows on the lower story, the outermost of which are six-over-one wood sash while the central window is a ten-over-one wood sash window.

The eastern and western elevations are also similar, the only difference being that the eastern elevation features a garage door in the large opening and the western elevation is open, as it retains its original waiting benches beneath the roof and its single-leaf entrance into the depot. The gable ends on all four elevations are stuccoed and half-timbered and the cornices throughout are decorated with jig-sawn exposed rafters. Also, the windows throughout are placed so that they are indented into the stone and brick water table.

The interior retains its original floor plan and such original elements as the brick dado, paneled wood doors and the ticket window. The cargo doors in the cargo room survive also, complete with their original hardware.

The only alterations of note are the placement of the garage door entrance on the eastern elevation and the resurfacing of some of the interior rooms during the adaptation of the depot into its current use as an insurance agency.