Memphis has had a number of fine-looking railroad depots over the years. Central Station is, of course, still standing on South Main, and quite beautifully restored.
But all the others are gone. Poplar Street Station, built in 1890 just across Front Street from the old Ellis Auditorium, was a magnificent brick structure with a soaring clock tower. It was famous as the site where legendary engineer Casey Jones left on his final ride, but it came down in 1939. If you know where to look, you can still see parts of the stone foundation and ornamental-iron fence.
The grandest of them all, though, was Union Station, shown here in a wonderful image taken from The Artwork of Memphis, published in 1912 by The Gravure Illustration Company of Chicago. Taking up an entire block along Calhoun, it was considered one of the finest stations in the South when it opened in 1912.
The authors of Memphis: An Architectural Guide call it "the finest Beaux Arts structure ever built in Memphis. ... This monumental building, with a grandeur learned from nineteenth-century French architecture, who knew what grandeur was all about, made arrivals and departures the exciting events they were supposed to be in the great days of the railroads."
It was indeed a showplace, with 45-foot ceilings, mosaic tiles, marble columns and floors, massive wooden beams, and a separate waiting room for female passengers. A "union" station because it served trains from a number of railroads — including the Southern, Missouri Pacific, and Louisville & Nashville lines — at one time this palace handled more than 200 passengers a day. During the heyday of rail travel in the 1920s and 1930s, more than 80 passenger trains came through Memphis every day, and Union Station was, I recall, a favorite stopping point for the private Lauderdale coaches.
But rail traffic dwindled in the 1950s, replaced by planes and cars, and Memphis finally tore down Union Station in 1964 and replaced it with a post office. At the time, Mayor William B. Ingram said razing the train station "would help spur development of that section of city," which seems to be what people say whenever they want to tear down a historic building. What a shame we didn't keep this one.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE ARTWORK OF MEMPHIS, PUBLISHED IN 1912 BY THE GRAVURE ILLUSTRATION COMPANY.
