Springfield, OH: Big Four Depot

Carl Venzke posted
Big Four Depot, Springfield, Ohio c 1910 with passenger equipment in front.
Glen Brewer I wonder what kind of car that is? Looks like a parlor car with open platform but what is in the left half?

Many more photos, including this one, are on SpringfieldOhioHistory.

It was built south of Washington Street and east of Limestone Street. Spring Street terminated at its center part. It was demolished in 1969 to construct the Spring Street Overpass. The overpass goes through what was part of that magnificent lobby window. "The station, exclusive to the Big Four at first, was later used by the Big Four, the Pennsylvania, the DT&I and the Erie." [AbandonedOnline, has more photos including some of the demolition] It is now another parking lot.

Update: Rick Giles posted three photos with the comment:

By the turn of the century, Springfield had felt the effects of the industrial revolution and had become a major manufacturing center, mainly for agricultural implements but for other industrial machinery as well such as steam turbines, piano manufacturing, and metal burial caskets. It was also home to the second largest weekly circulation magazine publisher in the United States, Crowell-Collier, publisher of Collier's magazine. Because of that Springfield's population was growing and with it a need for a new rail passenger depot to replace the older run down and cramped facility downtown. The first photo taken around 1880 from the top of the clock tower of the Springfield City Building shows just how congested the trackage was downtown. The passenger depot is obscured by the Arcade Hotel in the foreground and the long white structure in the background is the Big Four freight house. Also, the junction of the Sandusky and Columbus lines was right in the middle of the this maze of trackage and all the switches at that time were handled by switchmen. The city took a look at several proposals and decided to build a new "union station" for the three railroads that came into the downtown area. As it turned out, there wasn't one union station but three new depots for the three railroads. Because the Big Four was the main player in this scenario, they got the biggest depot by far. Springfield's population in 1910, a year before the new depot opened, was right at 42,000. Most towns of this size had much more modest structures but the Springfield city fathers anticipated a major population growth for the city and wanted to make sure they got a depot that could handle the traffic. They got a large grand Beaux Arts structure that would have been right at home for a city of much larger size. Unfortunately, the city never saw the growth that the city fathers anticipated, topping out at around 72,000 in the immediate post WW2 period. Consequently, the new depot, while a busy place in the heyday of rail passenger travel, never realized its full potential. The next photo shows the new depot near the end of its construction with the new trackage still not ballasted and the platform walkways not finished. The third photo shows the depot into its second decade of service.

Scott Trostel The D T & I passenger station was on North Limestone until 1930-ish when service was moved to the D T & I freight house just across (south) from the Big Four Station (today that site is in the parking area of the performing arts center). Many regional papers hailed the new Big Four station as a magnificent work of art IT met the steel demolition ball about 1968 - 1969.

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