Former Passenger Train Station in Marion IN

Marion PCC & St. Louis Railroad Depot, Marion Indiana

Date added: November 15, 2024

Looking northeast at back (southwest/railroad) facade (2016)

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The Marion PCC & St. Louis Railroad Depot, 1895, has features of the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles in its masonry construction and wood details of its eaves and cross gable walls. The Marion PCC & St. Louis Depot is the oldest of the two intact rail passenger depots in Marion.

The Marion PCC & St. Louis Railroad Depot is a good example of the response burgeoning railroad companies made to small cities for growing passenger travel on railroads. The depot was constructed at the height of the passenger industry as a demonstration of the railroad's commitment to the City of Marion for exceptional, modern facilities. The construction of the depot was followed closely by the city's business community who spoke out about the need for the building as part of the general economic wellbeing of Marion.

Grant County was crisscrossed by several railroads and all but one ran through Marion, the county seat. The first railroad attempted in the county was in 1856 by the Cincinnati, New Castle & Michigan Railroad. Grading had been completed and private donations raised, but the line was abandoned. The Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, also known as the Panhandle Route, was completed through the county in 1867. The first train came through Marion on October 19^th of that year. Two important national markets were opened to the manufacturers of Marion by virtue of the railroad: Chicago and Cincinnati. The county contributed $25,000 to the construction of the line. The Marion depot was exactly 157.3 miles from both Chicago and Columbus, Ohio.

Two other railroads were completed through the county within about six years of each other. The Cincinnati, Wabash and Michigan Railroad, also called the "Big Four" was completed in 1875 and crossed the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad on Marion's southeast side. The Narrow Gauge Railroad extended between Toledo and St. Louis and was completed in 1881. The road was supported by a tax through the townships it served but eventually the line was abandoned. By the late 1880s the Clover Leaf Railroad was constructed through Marion and at the end of the 1890s, the C & O Railroad was finished through Marion. The discovery of natural gas in Grant County in 1887 boosted the manufacturing and industrial role the county and city played to a larger scale, and the railroads permitted the network of markets needed for Marion to become an economic boom town during the last decades of the 19^th Century.

Before the PCC & St. Louis passenger depot was built, the railroad offered passenger and freight service out of the same wood-framed building located at on the southeast corner of McClure and 14" Streets in the industrial area of the city. This was at the junction of the PCC & St. Louis, Toledo & St. Louis and the Big Four railroads. All of the railroads offered freight service, typically at a separate facility from the passenger depot. The decision to build a few blocks northwest at Washington and 10^th Streets removed passenger service from the industrial area of the city and the junction of the various railroads. The PCC & St. Louis Railroad was the first of the network of railroads that served Marion to construct modern passenger facilities in 1895. Prior to that time, the structures were fairly simple wood frame buildings. Calls by business and civic communities to construct a "union station" as a common facility to handle all of the city's passenger rail traffic were abandoned with the construction of the PCC & St. Louis Railroad, which later came under the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, due to the investment by the railroad. Between 1895 and 1912, the three other railroads constructed new passenger stations in town.

As the PCC & St. Louis Railroad began upgrading its passenger facilities along the line, Marion found itself in competition with Anderson, Indiana for the completion of their new depot. Building materials, such as stone, brick, timber, etc. had been delivered to the new site by rail in 1893 and the stone foundation had been laid in place by June of that year. By July, though, work had stopped on the depot and in August, the contractors, I. N. Drury of Kidder & Beetle of Richmond, loaded the materials back onto train cars and moved to Anderson for the construction of an identical passenger depot. The donor for the ground in Anderson had stipulated that the new depot was to be constructed before winter of 1893, so in an effort to comply, the railroad company stopped work in Marion and changed their focus to Anderson. The foundation in Marion was left in its completed state and covered. Construction was not continued in Marion until at least late summer of 1894, the depot was completed in 1895. In June 1894, the Commercial Club of Marion adopted a resolution that was forwarded to the city council to urge the city to pressure the railroad into completing its depot. They impressed that the then-current passenger facilities were inadequate, unsightly and not in keeping with the growth and prosperity of Marion.

An article that appeared in the Marion Chronicle Weekly in June 1893 provides design information about the building. It was classified as "cottage design" with pressed brick and oolitic limestone to the height of three feet on the outside walls. Two entries on the front led to a main waiting room 27' x 30'. Men's and women's toilet rooms and a ticket room on the south side of the building, the three-sided bay, were included. The baggage room was to be 15' x 16'. The interior was to be finished with hard pine and beaded wainscoting. The building was to have a slate roof and tower extending up from the ticket office that would be finished with "fancy" shingles. Records indicate construction resumed on the building and it was completed by 1895; it appears on the 1896 Sanborn map of Marion. The freight house and a mechanics shop for the railroad remained near the former location.

The PCC & St. Louis Railroad constructed a new brick freight house at 520 Lincoln Boulevard in 1902; it replaced the old frame combination freight house and passenger depot. The building is no longer extant. Very similar in construction is the Toledo, St. Louis & Western Railroad at the corner of 4^th and McClure Streets in Marion. The brick and stone building was built in 1900 and has full-round arches and a three-sided bay like those of the PCC & St. Louis Depot. This depot and the PCC & St. Louis are the only extant steam/diesel railroad depots in Marion. The Anderson depot that the railroad constructed before Marion's was razed after a fire during the early 1970s.

The PCC & St. Louis Railroad merged with the Vandalia Railroad in 1916, and the railroad was then leased to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1921. The Pennsylvania Railroad merged the line with the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington Railroad in 1956. This was about the time passenger service ended on the railroad. The building was later sold to a private commercial business, a convenience store known as the Triangle Stop-N-Go, taking its name from the shape of the lot.

Concerning the builder. During the mid-1880s, Isaac N. Drury was a bridge builder and contractor living in Richmond, Indiana. Peter Kidder & Edward Beetle were partners in another large firm of contractors, carpenters and builders living in Richmond who likely collaborated with Drury on the depot project.

The Marion PCC & St. Louis Railroad Depot has a blend of two styles popular during the period it was constructed. The architect used a combination of features of both the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles to create an appealing, small-scaled passenger depot at the height of the railroad era. While the first-floor walls and openings read fairly clearly the Romanesque style, the porch, eaves and cross gable treatments are more clearly identified with the Queen Anne style. Existing interior features also demonstrate dual styles with tall wood wainscot paneling, glazed brick and extant fireplace.

The Romanesque Revival style was made popular by architect Henry H. Richardson, particularly on public buildings located along the east coast. The style often used large rusticated stone blocks for its wall construction, large rounded arches, and a sculptural appearance to the overall massing of the building. Railroads, expanding on their popular use for passenger travel in the late 1800s, commonly used the style for their passenger depots. Richardson himself designed depots that helped set the trend. His depot designs for the Boston and Albany Railroad during the 1880s were widely emulated. The Queen Anne style was popular between 1880 and 1910; it was named and popularized by a group of 19th-century English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw. Half-timbering and patterned brickwork found in the Queen Anne style in the United States most closely follow the work of Shaw and his colleagues in England. The pre-cut designs and architectural details were made available by the increased use of railroads that transported the products to growing towns. Romanesque and Queen Anne styles could be easily blended because of their common use of hipped roofs and cross gables, as is the case with the Marion depot.

The depot's rusticated stone base and wide, full-round arches that spring from rusticated brick plinths are the building's most notable features related to the style. The arches, which frame the entries, are trimmed with rusticated brick and composed of several courses of rowlocks. The building's windows are set on sill courses and have tall segmental arches. The building's masonry has added detail in the pebble finish on its sill course and rounded corners on the brick courses at the corners of the building. Though the feature was removed, an octagonal tower was once located on the back facade and gave the impression of a continuation of the three-sided bay, through the platform roof which is also no longer extant. This feature, along with the building's hipped roof and cross gables, is also commonly found in both Romanesque and Queen Anne designs.

While the Romanesque style portrayed heavy massing, Queen Anne features such as spindlework and other pre-cut wood details, often gave the impression of lace-like airiness to buildings. The pre-cut wood details on the depot include the turned porch posts on the southeast facade and unusual modillions that support the building's wide overhanging eaves. The modillions have a quarter sunburst pattern carved into their sides. A clear nod to the Queen Anne style is the treatment to the building's cross-gable walls. The walls are covered with fish scale shingles, half-timbering, and have their triangular top extended forward and supported by tall modillions. The cross gables on the front and back facades featured small square windows that are now covered with wood. While many of the first-floor windows have been covered or removed, one sash is visible in the three-sided bay on the back facade. It has a top sash configuration consistent with Queen Anne design and features a large center pane surrounded by small square panes around its perimeter.

Unfortunately, during remodel campaigns that converted the building into a convenience store in the 1960s-1980s, the interior suffered some loss of integrity, however, several of the building's most important interior features remain intact. The brick fireplace which provided some opulence to the large central waiting hall, is typically Romanesque with its brick pattern of rounded corners and narrow voussoirs-like jack arch. Its position, centered with the hallway between the toilet rooms and ticket room, demonstrates the formality the railroad hoped to convey to passengers. This is also true of the high ceilings with very broad cove detail and the craftsmanship of the wood wainscot. While the toilet rooms, which defined the central hall into two primary waiting areas were removed, they can be recreated based on the markings in the ceiling above the area. Extant remnants of window sashes and doors permit the recreation of appropriate entryways and windows.

Building Description

The Marion PCC & St. Louis Railroad Depot is an attractive stone and brick building dating to the railroad era's heyday when fine passenger depots were being constructed as a symbol of the railroad's prestige and of community pride. The building is situated on a prominent triangular lot and faces an intersection with active rail lines behind the building. The building features a hipped roof and porch and was constructed in 1895 with features of the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles: heavy masonry walls, wide, massive arches, eave modillions, and half-timbering and fish scale shingles in its lower cross gables.

The Marion PCC & St. Louis Railroad Depot is located on the southwest corner of South Washington and West 10^th Street on a triangular lot bordered on the southwest by the railroad. Most of the area to the south and west is residential in nature while some commercial uses line Washington Street and extend north and east. The depot building faces northeast toward the intersection of the two roads but is set back to the railroad tracks with an ample paved area in front of the building. Concrete curbs define most of the paved area against the building and form a perimeter to a walkway around the building. The walkway is concrete overlaid on brick pavers, which have been exposed in some locations around the building. Pavers are also located on the northwest corner of the site and concrete curbing extends between the building and the railroad bed. This should not be confused with the brick-paved street on the north side of the lot. A tall metal pole with guy-wires that support an arm extension is in the northwest corner of the lot. It appears to be unrelated to the rail uses of the property.

The building is forty-five degrees off the cardinal points of the compass, so the facades will be described as front, which is the northeast, back, which is the southwest, and the northwest and southeast sides of the building. The one-story building footprint is a simple rectangular box with a projecting baggage room off its northwest side and a large porch off its southeast side. The building's foundation is composed of rough limestone, and approximately five courses are exposed. on the back facade. A base composed of seven courses of dressed limestone, painted brown, is at the bottom of the building's walls. The middle five courses are heavily rusticated and the top course has a panel with a lightly pebbled finish. The top course forms a sill course for the building's windows. Tan-colored bricks compose the wall above the base. The corners of the building feature brick with rounded outside corners with a chamfered top edge on the first course of brick. The top five courses of brick project and are painted black.

The building's windows and entries have segmental arches composed of three courses of header brick. The building's windows and many of its entries are covered with wood or have been filled with concrete block c. 1960-1990. Many of the windows that have been covered with wood have large-diameter round wood molding that trims the window opening. Long wood modillions carved with a quarter-sunburst pattern support the wide overhanging eaves. The soffits are covered with beaded boards and the building has wood fascia. The building has a hipped roof and lower cross gables; the roof is covered with asphalt shingles. The cross-gable walls feature half-timber framing and are covered with wood fish scale shingles.

The front facade features two large full-round arched entries that flank a wide segmental-arched window opening west of center on the facade. The entries are composed of a door opening and transom area and side-lites that rest on top of the stone base. Wood pilasters with simple carved bases and capitals flank the door openings and also rest on the stone base. The doorway, transom and side-lites are covered with wood except in the west entry which features a metal door with a window. The large, full-round arches framing the entries are composed of four courses of rowlocks trimmed with a top course of rusticated headers. The arches rest on five courses of rusticated brick that form plinth blocks. The wide segmental-arched window is raised above the stone sill course by thirteen courses of brick and has a stone sill. It is covered with wood. The thirteen courses of brick form a recessed panel between the window and base. A very wide window opening with a simple lintel of brick is in the east half of the front facade. It was created from joining two segmental-arched windows together and the removal of brick between those windows, c. 1960. The arches are extant above the current opening which is covered with wood.

A cross gable is centered in the roof between the entries. Its sawn fascia features slight curves at the bottom of the rake. The gable wall is covered with fish scale shingles and has two small square window openings, now also covered with shingles. The top of the gable wall is jettied forward and supported by three tall scroll corbels that flank the windows below. The wall is divided into small squares by half-timbering.

The back facade features entries similar to those on the front facade on each end of the facade, with full-round arched openings and rusticated brick trim. The west entry is covered with wood, however the historic multi-panel wood door and transom are partially exposed. The east entry was enlarged at the bottom to the full width of the arch, however, the entire opening has been filled with block and brick to the underside of the arch. The upper corners of the c. 1960 square opening impinged on the original arch, damaging courses of headers in the arch. Two segmental-arched window openings are west of the east entry. They are filled with block. A three-sided bay with cutaway sides is east of the west entry. It features narrow windows with segmental arches in each of its walls. Two of the windows are covered with wood; the middle window's top sash is exposed and features small square panes of glass that enframe one large pane. Some of the small panes are amber-colored art glass. The bay has a hipped roof.

The top of the back facade features several courses of common brick at the top of the wall. This area was once covered by a large porch roof that extended toward the railroad tracks as a covering for a platform off the back of the building. Rafter pockets filled with concrete show the location of the porch ceiling. A few courses of wood siding enclose the attic area that was opened when the porch roof was removed. The roof once covered the three-sided bay, so the hipped roof is not original to the building. This removal occurred c. 1960. A lower cross gable is centered over the east entry. The gable wall is covered with fish scale shingles and has two small square window openings, now covered with wood. The top of the gable wall is extended forward and supported by three tall modillions that flank the windows below. The wall was divided into small squares by half-timbering, per ghost markings on the extant wood sheathing. A small shed roof on the west end of the building provides a porch on its west side. The steeply-pitched section of roof is supported on its outside corner by a square wood post.

The northwest facade features a wide, projecting baggage room centered on the facade. The baggage room has a hipped roof and features two segmental-arched window openings in its northwest wall. A tall entry centered on its southwest wall features a metal door and transom; the transom is covered with wood. A window opening is centered on the room's northeast wall. Flanking the baggage room, on the main building, are narrow window openings.

The southeast facade features a cross gable and a full-width porch with a shed roof. The porch floor is composed of brick pavers. The steeply-pitched porch roof is supported by three turned posts with pairs of flat, scroll-shaped brackets at the top of the posts. Exposed, scroll-shaped rafter tails without the sunburst pattern support the eaves of the porch roof. The porch ceiling is covered with beaded boards and the triangular-shaped wall that encloses the sides of the porch roof is covered with fish scale shingles. Wood corbels support the bottom of the wall enclosure against the brick wall of the building. A tall entry is located on the south end of the facade and features a wood door with a full window and transom; the transom area is filled with block. A window opening is on the north end of the facade; it is also filled with block. The cross gable wall features curvilinear half-timber framing. The top of the gable wall is extended forward and supported by a tall modillion. The wall is also covered with fish scale shingles.

In its existing condition, the interior of the building is arranged in three primary rooms: a large central hall, a ticket room facing southwest, and a baggage room on the northwest end of the building. Originally, the large central hall was divided into two areas by a pair of toilet rooms near the center of the building opposite the ticket room, with a hallway extending between the ticket room and toilet rooms. The area that was once the ticket and toilet rooms is defined by a lower ceiling, however, the walls enclosing the toilet rooms were removed.

The large central hall had four large arched exterior entryways with two leading to the front (northeast) and two leading to the railroad (southwest) sides of the building. These have been either partially or fully enclosed with block or framing. The wood floors have been covered by layers of linoleum and other materials. The entire perimeter of the hall is covered with a tall wainscot composed of beaded boards topped by a molding and recessed panel design. A narrow band of wood molding tops the panel design and extends up and around window and door casings. The hall has plaster walls and a high ceiling with a wide plaster cove around its perimeter which also outlines the ticket room and former toilet room area. A thin band of wood molding is at the base of the plaster cove. Remodeling campaigns removed most of the historic doors, many of the windows and interior wood casings. A wood staircase was built for access to a loft constructed over rooms in the southeast corner of the hall. All of the non-historic walls, drop ceilings and staircase were removed.

The main feature of the central hall is a brick fireplace in the southeast wall. The fireplace was centered on the hallway that lead between the ticket room and toilet rooms so it appears off-centered on the southeast wall. The fireplace is composed of light-brown colored brick with rounded outside corners and around the hearth. The hearth opening features a tall jack arch composed of narrow gauged brick. Square terra cotta tiles with a molded design are in the lower wall of the fireplace on each side of the hearth. The mantel and its corbels were removed to build a wall in front of the fireplace by previous owners. Three courses of cream-colored glazed brick are above the mantle area. The fireplace features a tapered design composed of stepped coursing above the glazed brick. Three additional courses of glazed brick top the fireplace at the base of its chimney.

The ticket room features cutaway corners on its northeast wall which mirrors the three-sided bay on the room's southwest wall that extends toward the railroad. The cove design of the ceiling and the cutaway corners form a prow-like detail over the cutaway walls. The northeast wall features a wide ticket window area that has been extended to the floor for a doorway. The pulley system for a drop ticket door is extant inside the wall in the opening above. A historic doorway is in the cutaway corner facing east and in the wall facing northwest into the central hall. The doors are missing. It appears from markings in the ceiling above the toilet rooms that they also had cutaway corners on their southwest wall to mirror the northeast wall of the ticket room.

The baggage room has exposed brick walls and concrete floors. The room features a large arched exterior entryway facing southwest (the railroad), and a large opening for baggage doors into the central hall of the depot. A doorway is also located in the southeast corner of the room that also leads into the central hall. A large metal safe on wheels is located in this room. The building also features a basement and a small attic area which for the most part remain inaccessible. The basement was used for mechanical equipment.