Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot, Hope Arkansas
The city of Hope, Arkansas was platted in 1873 by Chief Engineer Morley of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad (later the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad). The city was named for the daughter of Major Loughborough, a director of the C. & F. Railroad. The activity and settlement encouraged by the railroad proceeded rapidly enough for the city to become incorporated by 1875 and for the first municipal elections to be held that same year. Hope was later selected as the terminus for the Arkansas and Louisiana Railroad also, which only served to increase its importance as a southwest Arkansas commercial center. Goodspeeds records that by 1890 Hope could boast of a business district " … nearly all built up with one and two story brick buildings … " and a population of approximately 1,500.
The Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot in Hope was constructed c. 1917 after the Missouri-Pacific Railroad acquired the old St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern line that ran between Missouri and Texas as part of its ambitious campaign to expand its network of rail lines all over the country, and to establish the railroad's corporate identity through the exclusive use of the Italianate/Mediterranean style of architecture for its passenger and freight depots.
Building Description
The Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot in Hope is a single-story, brick masonry freight and passenger depot designed in the Mediterranean style (though with clear Craftsman influences) that was the architectural idiom of choice for several of the railroad lines that traversed Arkansas during the early twentieth century, but especially for the Missouri-Pacific Railroad. Its plan features separate passenger and freight buildings that are divided by an open breezeway yet united into a single structure by a continuous, compound hipped/gable asphalt shingle roof. A total of four brick chimneys rise from the roof: one from the southern roof slope, just to the east of center; a second from the center of the western hip, abutting the open passageway; and the third and fourth from the ridge of the western freight section, one also near the open passageway and the other abutting the western, gable end wall. The passenger section is roughly rectangular in plan, as its western elevation is augmented with a telegrapher's bay. The roof and walls are supported throughout by a continuous, cast concrete foundation.
The southern or front elevation is formed by the passenger section to the east, covered by its combination hipped/gable roof, and the open passageway and freight section to the west, all of which is covered by a single gable roof. The side gable wall to the east is lighted by two tall one-over-one wood sash windows flanking a single-leaf entrance, and by another smaller window next to the perpendicular wall of the hipped roof section. The hipped roof section to the west is evenly divided into three principal bays: the two single-leaf entrance bays at either end, each of which is flanked by two pairs of one-over-one wood sash windows with transoms, and a large, central tri-partite window composed of three one-over-one wood sash windows with transoms. The open passageway to the west is reinforced by two columns beneath each beam at both entrances, and the freight section at the western end of the elevation is accessed by two rolling freight doors, each surmounted by a five-pane transom, and each of which is flanked by one-over-one wood sash windows.
The northern elevation is virtually identical in form to that opposite, with the exception of the projecting telegrapher's bay placed in the middle of the hipped roof portion of the passenger's section. The western side of the telegrapher's bay is accessed via a single-leaf door; the eastern side is lighted by a single one-over-one wood sash window. Also, the tri-partite window in the center of the front of the telegrapher's bay is also slightly larger than the tri-partite window opposite.
The western elevation is lighted by two symmetrically-placed one-over-one wood sash windows; the eastern elevation is accessed via a large cargo door, placed off-center to the south, and a single-leaf entrance to the north.
Significant exterior details include the exposed rafters and decorative wood knee braces that surround the cornice of the entire structure, the concrete water table around the entire structure, and the concrete lintels and sills above and below the windows and doors, respectively.
Though the Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot in Hope is currently boarded-up and unoccupied, it is being well-maintained. It is in good condition.
View from west (1989)
