Memphis & Charleston Freight Depot, 330 Church Street Northwest, Huntsville

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-190. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Approximately six-acre lot at 330 Church Street NW, Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama. Date: erected 18 56 Structural Type: The depot comprises square feet of enclosed space. The platform area comprises approximately square feet, and roof area about 10, 000 square feet normal to the roof planes. Construction is brick with a heartwood, heavy-timber roof frame. Railroad tracks front the south face of the building. An approximately concrete slab and concrete-block platform was added to the west of the southwest corner of the building at mid-twentieth century. The original roof material is unknown. Metal roof patches were added in the eraly to an otherwise cement-fiber shingled roof.

An Italianate character is suggested by the depot's broad, over hanging, And bracketed eaves, segmentally arched lintels on its doors and windows, louvered roundels, and decorative brick work. On the building's west and east sides, the eaves cantilever out to cover the staging areas where cotton and other commodities were moved from the cars to the warehouse interior.

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-190. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

LeeAnn Bishop Land, MEMPHIS & CHARLESTON FREIGHT DEPOT HAER No. AL-190 (Page 2) History Railroads were part and parcel of the nation's nineteenth century industrial infancy. Antebellum Alabama planters envisioned rails exporting the region's agricultural commodities and simplifying trading between parts of the state divided by mountain ranges and unnavigable river routes. But railways grew slowly until state and regional leaders aggressively pursued industrialization after the Civil War. In the South, as historians Tom Terrill and William Cooper described, railroads "formed the superstructure of the economy of the New South.

They were the elemental precondition to better times." Indeed, the railway mania swept the South after the Civil War, infecting politicians, business men, and potential railway laborers. Despite the war-related destruction, and with the help of northern capitol and government subsidies, by railroad mileage in the South doubled that in reaching 19, 430 miles. Mileage tripled between and as railroads scaled mountains, transcended rivers, and this made more land exploitable for agriculture, cattle, and industry. Alabama, with Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas, led the region in state aid to railroads and in new construction from to More than 300 companies operated and owned up to 100 miles of track.

The Memphis & Charleston, with over 200 miles of track by the start of the Civil War, served as a major east-west artery through north Alabama. The Memphis & Charleston Railroad Company chartered to operate in Alabama in to serve planters desiring an east-west rail to ship cotton either to Memphis or Charleston ports. Workers began constructing the line in Madison county the next year. By the Memphis and Charleston tracks ran 272 miles from Memphis to Stevenson. As the company grew, it divided into Eastern and Western Divisions, and Huntsville served as headquarters for the east. The town also served as home to the company's rail shops - one of Huntsville's early industries - which comprised a roundhouse with turntable, an engine house, car shop, and machine shop (all since destroyed).

The Memphis & Charleston primarily hauled cotton, and most M&C stations were freight depots incorporating a ticket office. In Huntsville, however, since the city served as Eastern Division headquarters, the M&C built separate freight and passenger depots, completing the fright depot in and the passenger depot in Despite Union occupation of Huntsville during the Civil War, the railroad facilities remained intact. After the war, the freight and near- by passenger depot continued as a rail hub for North Alabama. Since nineteenth-century railroad depots became town centers and local attractions in the South.

Built with distinguished flair, usually with the current Italianate influences (often including louvered roundels and decorative lintels and brackets), the depots celebrated the New South's desire for growth, industrialization, and urbanization. In a write for Building News observed that depots had become "to the nineteenth century what monasteries and cathedrals were to the century. They are truly the only real representative building we possess Our metropolitan termini have been leaders of the art spirit of the time." Even though the freight depot was not intended for passengers or much other public contact beyond freight exchange, Huntsville's freight depot exuded the typical Italianate flavor, such as decorative brackets and MEMPHIS & CHARLESTON FREIGHT DEPOT HAER No.

AL-190 (Page 3) brickwork, louvered roundels, and segmentally arched lintels on its doors and windows. Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company owned the Huntsville freight depot from until when the Southern Railway System bought the Memphis & Charleston as part of the vicious competition with the Louisville & Nashville to monopolize southern lines. Southern Railway operated the depot from to when the company merged with Norfolk & Western to become Norfolk Southern. At present, Norfolk Southern owns the depot and the approximately six-acre lot. Few details of building changes are known due to lack of historical records. At mid- twentieth century a concrete block and slab platform was added that extends about fifty feet west of the building.

This created a water-trap where water stands constantly, causing a "rising damp" problem and decay of the lime-and-sand mortar. The roof was replaced at some point in the twentieth century. Various window fill-ins and reconstructions are evident. Norfolk Southern quit using the depot in and began to demolish the site in fall but the Historic Huntsville Foundation worked quickly to halt the destruction. The Historic Huntsville Foundation is negotiating to buy the depot and the associated land, or otherwise develop a preservation plan for the building. Three customers, at present, still use the Norfolk Southern tracks adjacent to the depot, which hinders acquisition of the land. The nearby M&C passenger depot is owned and preserved by the city.

It is contained in the National Register of Historic Places MEMPHIS & CHARLESTON FREIGHT DEPOT HAER No. AL-190 (Page 4) Consulted Sources Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, Bayer, Linda. "The Railroad Comes to Huntsville" The Historic Huntsville Quarterly (Spring Cline, Wayne. Alabama Railroads Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, Cooper, William J. Jr. and Thomas E. Terrill The American South: A History. New York: McGraw-Hill, Ellis, Diane. Interview, Historic Huntsville Foundation, 1 July Gamble, Robert. The Alabama Catalog: Historic American Building Survey, A Guide to the Early Architecture of the State. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, Gilliam, Catherine K.

Stations and Stops," The Historic Huntsville Quarterly (Spring ),