Presents
Presents
By:
Dr. Dan L. Morrill, Professor
of History
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Listen carefully! Can you hear the ghosts of the engineers, conductors, and brakemen jumping from the trains and walking slowly toward the dormitory on the second floor of the Seaboard Station to catch a few hours of jittery sleep before heading back for places like Rutherfordton, Hamlet, or Wilmington? The overalls of these hard-boiled workmen are covered with splotches of oil, grime and soot. Perspiration drips from their bodies as clouds of scorching steam spew from the now-motionless engines parked behind them along the track.
Walk inside, and you'll see the big open spaces that used to be the waiting rooms. For more than 60 years travelers gathered here on their way in or out of town, just like they do today at Douglas International Airport. Kids scampered across the floor and jumped on their tiptoes to look into the ticket window. Old ladies sat on scruffy wooden benches and struggled to stay awake. Young lovers embraced in hopes that they could somehow push back the time when they would have to say good-bye. All sorts of folks -- white, black, skinny, and fat -- sat in the Seaboard Station or walked beneath its passenger sheds. Some peered down the tracks. Others listened for the mournful sound of the steam engine's whistle far away in the Carolina night.
The Charlotte Seaboard Air Line Railroad Passenger Station at North Tryon Street and the railroad overpass is filled with wondrous stories. It is a treasure chest of memories of those bygone days when steam locomotives lumbered across the red hills of the Piedmont and transformed Charlotte from a backwoods courthouse town into a major industrial and distribution center of the two Carolinas.1 The Seaboard Station is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and it is a local historic landmark.
Unfortunately, some memories at the Seaboard Station are downright disturbing. Look at an old floor plan and you will see that the waiting room on the western end of the building was much larger than its counterpart on the opposite side of the terminal. There was even a powder room for the ladies! The reason for these differences is not difficult to discern. The bigger and more commodious waiting room and accompanying ladies' powder room were "For Whites Only."
The Seaboard Station opened on June 16, 1896, in the heyday of legal racial segregation in the South. During those tragic years, racism hung like a menacing shroud over the black population of Charlotte. It's hard to believe that prominent whites like Daniel Augustus Tompkins, engineer, industrialist, and founder of the modern Charlotte Observer , and Cameron Morrison, an attorney and future Governor of North Carolina, preached the misguided and monstrous doctrines of white supremacy during those years and championed the passage of local ordinances that sent black Charlotteans to the back of the electric streetcars that rumbled up and down Tryon Street on their trips to and from the station.2
The Seaboard Station did have its festive moments, however. On May 2, 1898, a patriotic crowd of thousands lined both sides of Tryon Street the entire seven blocks from the Square and surged around the station itself to bid an emotional farewell to the soldiers in the Hornets' Nest Rifles and the Queen City Guards, who were about to board trains headed for the Spanish American War. 3 A parade, led by Confederate veterans, no doubt haunted by memories of Civil War battlefields like Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, and Petersburg, marched to the Seaboard Station through a "sold phalanx of humanity." "Yards and houses were decorated with flags, and from thousands of throats went up cheer after cheer," wrote a reporter for the Charlotte Observer.
Suddenly, the doleful sound of a locomotive's whistle could be heard approaching from the west, probably from somewhere just beyond the campus of Biddle Institute. The crowd buzzed with excitement and anticipation. The troop train was about to arrive from Shelby! Young soldiers, bedecked in colorful military garb, gathered on the station platform and began waving to the crowd . Children scurried at their fathers' feet, while wives, mothers and girlfriends hugged the necks of their departing heroes. One reporter wrote:
. . . farewells were said, and the soldiers boarded the train, many of them laden with flowers. Tears fell from the eyes of mothers, sisters and sweethearts. To them it was a sad occasion.
Charles Christian Hook (1870-1938), the architect, selected the Classical Revival style for the stucco-on-brick station.4 Unlike the fanciful and ornate Spanish Mission style Southern Railroad Station on West Trade Street, which was designed just after 1900 by Frank Milburne and unthinkingly demolished in the early 1960's, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad Passenger Station is a relatively plain and austere building. It certainly has none of the elaborate turrets and towers that characterize most Victorian buildings.
C. C. Hook was the leading proponent of Classical Revivalism in Charlotte at the turn of the century, and the Seaboard Station was his first public building to exhibit such features.5 Over the next thirty years, Hook, a remarkably talented and sensitive human being, would use this style in such imposing structures as the Gautier-Gilchrist House on East Park Avenue in Dilworth, Lynnwood, better known as the James B. Duke Mansion or White Oaks in Myers Park, and the Charlotte City Hall on East Trade Street, to mention just a few of Hook's buildings in Charlotte.
A major renovation and expansion of the terminal occurred in 1916, when A. M. Walkup, Inc. of Richmond, Va. erected one-story additions to both ends of the station. The new baggage room arrived just in time to serve thousands of men who came to Camp Greene, a huge World War I training camp that had been established just beyond the southwestern edge of the city.6 Hundreds of caskets filled with the corpses of young soldiers who died in the Spanish flu epidemic waited under the passenger sheds and in the baggage room to be hauled to hometowns all over the country. The Seaboard Station continued to serve generations of passengers, happily alive, until November 3, 1958, when the last passenger train headed east toward Monroe.7
In 1987 it looked like the Seaboard Station would soon be destroyed, because CSX Transportation, the owner, stopped using it as a yard office, locked the doors and boarded up the windows. Happily, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission stepped forward and persuaded CSX to donate the station on December 16, 1988, and to lease the land around it to the Commission for $100 per year. On December 31, 1990, the Historic Landmarks Commission bought the land outright with money provided by Mecklenburg County. A fence was erected around the station, and emergency repairs were performed on the roof. The Commission was just trying to keep the station alive in hopes that somebody would buy it and preserve it for future generations.
In January, 1991, an electrical fire broke out in the station; but luckily a passing engineer, maybe the great grandson of one of those sweat-soaked crewmen from the days of steam at the turn of the century, spotted the fire and called the fire department. I remember driving to the station in the middle of the night. I was beating the steering wheel in utter frustration, because I expected to find the Seaboard Station engulfed in flames when I rounded the corner at the northern end of College Street. The news could have been worse, much worse. Part of the ceiling in the old colored waiting room was destroyed. Otherwise, the venerable old building survived more or less intact.
December 22, 1993. That was a wonderful day! A group of uptown churches bought the Seaboard Air Line Passenger Station from the Historic Landmarks Commission and announced plans to spend about $500,000 converting it into a daytime shelter and counseling center for the homeless. The facility opened with festive ceremonies on December 11, 1994. I never shall forget standing in front of the Seaboard Station on that cold afternoon and listening to a boys' choir from St. Peter's Episcopal Church singing the dedicatory hynms. Now Charlotte can be assured that one of its few remaining railroad landmarks will be preserved for future generations. Energy and vitality will once more fill the building. The Hornets' Nest Rifles will be happy. C. C. Hook will be happy. The engineers, conductors and brakemen who slept in the dormitory on the second floor will be happy. I know that I will be happy! Will you be happy?
Dr. Morrill will be producing a twice-a-year journal on Charlotte-Mecklenburg History. The subscription price would be $30 per year or $15 per copy. If you are interested or want to be put on Dr. Morrill's mailing list send him an email.
For more information about North Carolina Railroads check out the NC Rail Fan Guide
Bibliography
1 The initial railroad station passenger terminal on this site was built in 1858 by the Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherfordton Railway Company. It served as the eastern terminus of a thirty-one mile line from Charlotte to Lincolnton, which was completed by April, 1861. On May 17, 1873, the Carolina Central Railway Company acquired the right-of-way and undertook the task of completing a continuous track from Wilmington, N.C. to Rutherfordton, N.C. This job was completed on December 15, 1874. The station on N. Tryon St. now provided access to the major east-west passenger line in Charlotte. On August 1, 1893, the Carolina Central joined with several other railroads to form the Seaboard Air Line. A ticket office and waiting rooms were added. The initial passenger terminal, a narrow two-story structure with a tin roof, was destroyed by fire on the night of February 11, 1895. The Seaboard Air Line enclosed the passenger sheds for temporary use as a station. On July 28, 1895, the Seaboard Air Line announced that it would build a new station. Construction began in December, 1895.
The first railroad arrived in Charlotte in October, 1852. It connected Charlotte with Charleston, South Carolina via Columbia. Local boosters, especially Dr. Charles J. Fox, a physcian, were instrumental in raising the funds to have the railroad built. Mecklenburg County has lost population in the 1840's, largely because of lagging production in the gold mines of the region; and Fox and his associates correctly believed that the railroad would enliven economic actitivity in Charlotte and its environs.
2 The electric streetcars traveled north on Tryon St., turned right on Phifer Ave., left on College St., named for the Presbyterian College for Women which stood just east of the intersection of Phifer Ave. and College St., continued along College St. until it ended, turned left and moved down the hill and proceeded past the south side of the Seaboard Station, and turned down Tryon St. and headed back to the Square.
3 For a detailed description of this event, see the Charlotte Observer, May 3, 1898, p. 4.
4 Charles Christian Hook, born to German parents in Wheeling, W. Va., graduated from American University in St. Louis Mo. and came to Charlotte in 1890 to teach mechanical drawing at the South Graded School, which was housed in the building which had served as the home of the North Carolina Institute in the years just proceeding the Civil War. Soon thereafter, he began to design homes for residents of Dilworth, the streetcar suburb which opened just south of Charlotte in May, 1891. Hook left teaching and established his own architectural practice.
5 The initial Classical Revival structure designed in Charlotte by C. C. Hook was the home of Frank Wilkes on E. Morehead St. Unfortunately, the house does not survive. For a discussion of the design of this home, see the Charlotte Observer, September 19, 1894, p. 4.
6 The majority of troops who came to Camp Greene arrived at the Southern Railroad Station.
7 Passenger service to Rutherfordton and all points west had ended in December, 1950.
Updated 12/14/95 by Scott Brumley - Comments