Michigan Central Depot, Kalamazoo Michigan

Kalamazoo's Michigan Central Depot, designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style by Cyrus W. L. Eidlitz and completed in 1887, stands today as a significant example of an important late nineteenth-century architectural style. The structure, still functioning as a train station, also stands as a living record of the period in which Michigan's expansion of railroad mileage peaked, a period in which Michigan developed its predominantly urban and industrial economy.
Cyrus Eidlitz, born in 1853, was already a well-established New York architect when he was commissioned to design the Kalamazoo Depot. He had designed a railway station in Detroit, built in 1883, and the Dearborn Station in Chicago, completed by 1886. Moreover, in 1884 his plans for the Buffalo Library had won a well-publicized competition in which some of America's leading architects, including Henry Hobson Richardson, participated. Thus, when Eidlitz came to Kalamazoo, he brought with him a growing reputation as a designer of public buildings. His plans for the Michigan Central Depot did not possess the imposing scale of his great works in Buffalo and Chicago, but the smaller building in Kalamazoo perhaps surpassed the other two in its effective use of broad roof planes. Eidlitz later joined other architects of the 1889s and 1890s in building early skyscrapers; his most important was the Townsend Building in New York, 1896.
By 1887 five railroad companies and over one hundred passenger and freight trains per day linked Kalamazoo with the rest of the nation. During that year revenue from Kalamazoo passenger fares can be estimated at approximately $180,000 and freight shipments totaled roughly one-third of a million tons, a 25 percent increase over the previous year. Thus, from the first year of its completion, Kalamazoo's Michigan Central Depot participated significantly in the transportation of people, raw materials, and manufactured products, and this expansion of transportation capacity contributed directly to the late nineteenth-century acceleration of Michigan's industrial development and urbanization.
Realizing that Kalamazoo possesses a unique and significant train station, the city of Kalamazoo is currently taking steps to create a multi-modal transportation center at the site of the Michigan Central Depot. Plans include the rehabilitation of the train station interior, the restoration of its exterior and landscaping, and the construction of an architecturally compatible municipal bus barn and taxi facilities on the north side of the tracks. The City is eager to restore the Michigan Central Depot in Kalamazoo to its original elegance, thereby making it a focal point for its new downtown transportation center and Convention Center.
Building Description
Built in 1887, the Michigan Central Depot extends for approximately two hundred feet along an east-west axis on the south side of the railroad tracks in downtown Kalamazoo. The building consists of a high hip-roofed central mass flanked to the east and west by smaller hip-roofed asymmetrical dependencies. The ridge line of the central roof parallels the east-west axis of the structure, while the ridge lines of the dependencies run north-south. Shed dormers break the south roof slope. Balanced by a conical projecting bay to the north, a gable-roofed porch with a Syrian arch extends to the south of the central mass. Modeled brick chimneys and an octagonal cupola provide a vertical counterpoint for the strong horizontal lines of the structure. With its conical turret, rock-faced masonry arches, and broad planed roofs, the red brick structure may be described as Richardsonian Romanesque in style.
The central portion of the structure houses a large waiting room which still contains the original dark oak benches, wall moldings, and ceilings. Ticket offices, a baggage area, and restrooms are located on the east side of the waiting room. Beyond them is a wing of old railroad offices. To the west of the main entrance are recently partitioned offices; added around 1960, these partitions have not permanently impaired the original architectural detail of the waiting room's interior. Further to the west, a colonnade extends to a storage area or warehouse. Within the front turret of the depot, a spiral staircase ascends to the conductors' quarters on the second story.
Though many windows have been boarded up and though signs of interior and exterior deterioration are apparent, the depot is located on the state's priority rail line from Detroit to Chicago and hence continues to function in its original capacity. Already scheduled for increased use, the station currently keeps its ticket offices and waiting room open daily to serve more than forty Amtrak train stops per week. The present condition of the depot site likewise retains much of its original integrity. Unfortunately, the old brick parking lot to the immediate south of the structure has been covered recently with a layer of asphalt, but there have been few other modern intrusions upon the sparsely landscaped space that immediately surrounds the station. The depot is located one block from the Kalamazoo Street Mall and two blocks from the Kalamazoo Convention Center.

South facade (1975)

North Facade (1975)
