Great Overland Station, listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

as Union Pacific Railroad Passenger Depot, is a museum and former railroad station in

Topeka Topeka ( ; Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central Un ...

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...

, United States. The station was built from 1925 to 27 and designed by

Gilbert Stanley Underwood Gilbert Stanley Underwood (1890–1960) was an American architect best known for his National Park lodges. Born in 1890, Underwood received his B.A. from Yale in 1920 and a M.A. from Harvard in 1923. After opening an office in Los Angeles that ...

, whose firm designed over 20

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

stations from 1924 to 1931. The station's Free Classical Revival design uses

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

extensively and features a center pavilion with two increasingly smaller pavilions on either side. Passenger service to the station began in January 1927; almost 20,000 people attended the station's grand opening, and the new station was considered "one of the largest and finest stations west of the Missouri River". In the later years of its train station life, it also hosted the passenger trains of the

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (CRI&P RW, sometimes called ''Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway'') was an American Class I railroad. It was also known as the Rock Island Line, or, in its final years, The Rock. At the end ...

(Rock Island Lines). The

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison, Kansas, Atchison and Top ...

'Santa Fe' had its trains stop at its own Topeka station.

Passenger trains

*Rock Island passenger trains included the: **'' Golden State'' **''

Imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texa ...

'' **''Oklahoma Rocket'' **''

Twin Star Rocket The ''Twin Star Rocket'' was a passenger train operated by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. Introduced on January 14, 1945, it was the only new streamlined train permitted to enter service in World War II by the U.S. governmen ...

'' *Union Pacific trains included the:''Official Guide of the Railways'' December 1951, Union Pacific section **''

City of St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

'' **''Pony Express''

Decline

Passenger totals at the station declined through the 1950s and 1960s, and the last regular passenger service to the station ended in 1971. The Union Pacific Railroad repurposed the station as office space and a customer service center before abandoning the building in 1989. In 1992, a fire damaged the western part of the station; the same year, the group Railroad Heritage, Inc. (then known as Topeka Railroad Days, Inc.) agreed to consider renovating the station. The station was extensively rehabilitated from 2000 to 2002 and is now a railroad heritage museum. The Great Overland Station was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 2002.

References

External links

Great Overland Station official website
Railway stations on the National Register of Historic Places in Kansas Buildings and structures in Topeka, Kansas Museums in Topeka, Kansas Gilbert Stanley Underwood buildings Union Pacific Railroad stations Railroad museums in Kansas Repurposed railway stations in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Topeka, Kansas Former railway stations in Kansas {{Kansas-museum-stub