The Great Northern Depot Then and Now
The station was sometimes called the Minneapolis Union Depot, which actually was the name of the previous station on the opposite side of Hennepin Avenue that had been in use for 30 years. The older Union Depot was razed. The current building on that site is the central downtown Minneapolis Post Office. The Stone Arch Bridge was built to serve the original Minneapolis Union Depot and provided access to the Great Northern Depot. The Minneapolis BNSF Rail Bridge, an older crossing of the Mississippi River to the north, also served the depot with a cutoff track located on the bridge.
The Minneapolis Great Northern Depot was built to serve the railroad empire of James J. Hill. It was constructed at the height of the City Beautiful movement, at a time when Minneapolis was striving to revive the decaying Bridge Square area. The building was designed by Charles Sumner Frost, who had earlier designed the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Depot Freight House and Train Shed, and then later the Saint Paul Union Depot.[1] (Frost had also supervised the construction of the Navy Pier in Chicago and the Maine State Building at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. ) The Depot was constructed of brick and reinforced concrete. It was faced with light Kettle River sandstone. It was designed in a Beaux-Arts style with a Doric colonnade facing Hennepin Avenuue.
The train tracks ran Northwest – Southeast along the Mississippi river, under Hennepin Avenue and into a pass-through train shed. Passenger train service declined from a peak of 125 daily trains during World War II to just a few national routes on a sometimes daily basis. When Amtrak was formed in 1971, the trains stopped at the depot for a short time until the Midway station was constructed. I think I road one of the last Amtrack trains out of the depot with my Cub Scout group. We went to Red Wing and I think it was the same day Hubert H. Humphrey died. Amtrack consolidated Minneapolis and Saint Paul service at Midway (Amtrak station) of Saint Paul, and ended passenger train service to downtown Minneapolis. The Great Northern Depot was demolished in 1978. The area lay vacant and was adjacent to the Berman Buckskin building and the Chicago Great Western railway freight warehouse. All these buildings were torn down to make way for development. The site is occupied by the third and current Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis building.
1950
Have you seen any pics of the inside of the Depot? I’d love to see that.
I snapped a large quantity of Mpls GN Depot photos in the 1970s. Both before and after the 1978 closing, plus documentary shots of the demolition. Some inside shots are included. Below is a link to my online photos via Keyword search “Mpls GN Depot”
http://johnhill_3009.rrpicturearchives.net/srchThumbs.aspx?srch=mpls+gn+depot&search=Search
Nice informative capsule history web page by the way. Where and when were those photos taken showing the concrete column sections laying on the ground?
I found those pictures here and now you know as much as I do. Thanks for checking out the site and sharing the link to those beautiful pictures. I love the back of the depot at dusk and the Amtrack going over the Stonearch Bridge.
There you go. A 1950 picture from the Strib. Anything else?