116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Cedar Rapids’ old Union Depot
It was ‘a foul blot, an insult, a monument to greed,’ The Gazette decreed
Diane Fannon-Langton
Apr. 16, 2024 5:00 am, Updated: Apr. 16, 2024 8:51 am
As I wrote in a November 2014 Time Machine, “The Cedar Rapids Union Depot was a small, unattractive building that hardly suited a growing city.’
Plans for that first union depot began when the Chicago, Iowa & Nebraska Railroad ran a rail line through Cedar Rapids in June 1859, bringing passenger service to the city two years before the Civil War.
Expecting more railroads would be coming, leaders began looking into building a “union” depot that would serve the passengers on all railroads.
In 1861, people were invited to a meeting at Daniels Hall to show their support for “a large and commodious Railroad Depot in the central part of town,” the Cedar Valley Times reported Feb. 7
In the meantime, rail traffic into the city increased, and railroads made do with their own depots. Negotiations began in 1866 to build a union depot. But the effort took some time.
‘Disappointment’
In April 1869, one woman passenger wrote the Cedar Rapids Times about the deplorable condition of a Cedar Rapids train station.
She noted a lack of seating in the waiting room and the presence of drunks and vagrants in the crowded station. The stations needed to be upgraded, she said.
“The condition of ours has been a byword among the traveling public for years, and that it cannot afford decent accommodations for strangers and a waiting room for ladies is a disgrace to the community,” she added.
“Every year we have a new excitement over an old subject, viz the construction of a new depot, and each succeeding time we are doomed to disappointment.”
First Union Depot
Finally, in 1870, the first Union Depot was built near First Avenue and Fourth Street SE (then Jefferson and Iowa avenues). It was owned by the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern and the Chicago & North Western railroads.
Fire ravaged the new depot 11 years later, on May 9, 1883. The fire was first noticed by employees in the BCR&N ticket office across the road.
“Before any of the fire department arrived, the street was filled with smoke and the thick, black clouds were pouring from every door and window of the burning building,” The Gazette reported.
Repairs, ‘eyesore’
Repairs began immediately, but the resulting Union Depot was considered an eyesore by the traveling public. Sentiment grew for a new station.
By 1888, a new Cedar Rapids & Chicago depot was being built on the site of the old St. James Hotel on First Avenue, and a Milwaukee depot was planned for Second Avenue and Fourth Street.
“It is hoped yet that the union depot proposition may be agreed to by the different roads and a depot built which would be a credit to the city,” The Gazette opined.
But that would only happen if “one of the roads would come down off a horse sixteen hands high, which it has mounted for the purpose of surveying the scene.”
Two years later, in 1890, the Young Men’s Commercial Club organized a push for a new depot “of some architectural beauty and with the convenience and capacity which the Cedar Rapids public demands.”
Impetus built slowly, propelled in large part by The Gazette, which rarely had kind words for the old station. The paper’s lobbying effort for a new facility included a story in January 1893 headed, “Wanted — A New Depot.”
Without concern for kind words, the writer said, “The one thing that more than another is a foul blot on this city is the union railway depot. It is an insult to the people of this bright, progressive city, and a ‘monument’ to the greed, avarice and miserable management of those who stand in the way of better facilities and accommodation for the traveling public.”
Similar articles and Gazette cartoons appeared consistently for more than two years.
Early in 1896, the old depot’s days were numbered as the plans for a new station solidified.
“The new union depot will be a lasting ornament to the city. It is rolling in on the tide of the great public improvement for which Cedar Rapids is becoming famous in the year ’96,” The Gazette said.
Second Union depot
The new Union Depot opened in January 1897, but the old Union Depot still stood.
A lengthy lawsuit was filed by the heirs of the property’s original owner, Nicholas B. Brown, insisting that ownership of the vacated building revert to them.
In the meantime, the old depot was repurposed as a freight office and for storage.
The Brown heirs’ lawsuit was settled in 1901. That fall, it was announced the aging structure was to be razed to make way for a new freight office and warehouse.
Fast forward six decades, and the Union Station that had accommodated thousands of rail passengers in Cedar Rapids met the same fate as its predecessor.
Considered by some to be an eyesore, the second Union Station was demolished in 1961.
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