Vicksburg & Brunswick Depot, South Randolph Avenue, Eufaula

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-195. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The depot fronts South Randolph Avenue, Eufaula, Barbour County, Alabama Date: Structural Type: The depot comprises square feet of enclosed space (not including basement). Windows are arched on the exterior and square and shuttered on the interior. Brick walls measure 12' thick. Roof trusses (comprising three 2 x 12' brick pilasters. A standing-seam metal roof was added in the twentieth century (original roof unknown). Lower portions of salmon- brick (underbaked) brickwork are patched with cement. Decorative wooden brackets in each pilaster add support for the roof overhang. Four front (east side) rooms square feet each) served as offices and as a passenger waiting area.

Current floor consists of a modem plywood floor laid over a non-original 1 x 4' tongue-and-groove pine floor, laid over the original 1 x 6' heart pine floor. Three basement bearing walls run the length of the building at about 12 feet on centers, crossed above by 2.5 x 12' heart pine joists about 16' on center. Loading docks have since been removed. Builder: Vicksburg & Brunswick Railroad Company Owner: Eufaula United Methodist Church Purchaser: Central Railroad & Banking Company of Georgia Past Uses: train depot; Eufaula Hardware Company

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-195. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Built in the Vicksburg & Brunswick passenger and freight depot's Italianate architecture is representative of attractive railroad structures built in the immediate post-Civil War era as the railroad industry boomed. The architect, George Whipple, designed numerous other structures in the Eufaula area.

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-195. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Researched and written by LeAnn Bishop Lands, August VICKSBURG & BRUNSWICK DEPOT HAER No. AL-195 (Page 2) History Railroads were part and parcel of the nation's nineteenth century industrial infancy. Antebellum Alabama planters envisioned railways 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, a railway mania swept the South after the Civil War, infecting politicians, businessmen, 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 miles. Mileage tripled between and as railroads scaled mountains, transcended rivers, and thus 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 lines in the South by but only 60 companies operated and owned up to 100 miles of track.

Small companies, operating short stretches of track, provided the bulk of the region's railway network. The Vicksburg & Brunswick Railroad Company, organized in was typical of the small railway companies that built lines connecting trading and industrial towns throughout the South.

The company originally envisaged connecting Eufaula to Meridian, Mississippi via Troy, Greenville, and Camden, Alabama, but the railroad never made it past Clayton, Alabama, that 21-mile section being completed in Southwest Railroad Company began leasing the line in but the company was in foreclosure, and Central Railroad & Banking Company of Georgia, Southwest's creditor, purchased the railroad for The railroad reorganized in as the Eufaula and Clayton Railroad, a subsidiary of Central Railroad, and the new directors extended the railroad another 40 miles to Ozark, producing the Ozark and Eufaula Railroad. Central Railroad & Banking Company expanded quickly in the and hoping to challenge Louisville & Nashville's monopoly over the state's mineral regions.

Towards this end, the Savannah and Western (a Central Railroad & Banking Company subsidiary) consolidated the line connecting Ozark and Eufaula with Columbus & Western Railroad and East Alabama & Cincinnati Railroad in the mid- l 1 The Vicksburg & Brunswick Railroad Company built the Eufaula depot in as a combination passenger and freight terminal. Such nineteenth-century railroad depots became town centers and local attractions in the South. Built with distinguished flair, usually with 1 Central Railroad & Banking Company reorganized in to form the Central of Georgia Railway. VICKSBURG & BRUNSWICK DEPOT HAER No.

AL-195 (Page 3) 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 writer for Building News observed that depots had become "to the nineteenth 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." The Vicksburg & Brunswick fit this pattern and included tall arched windows and decorative wooden brackets and brickwork. But in the poor condition of the Eufaula depot demanded a new facility and was leased for various purposes until when the Eufaula Hardware Company rented the building to use as a warehouse.

The facility is currently owned by the Eufaula United Methodist Church. The church has discussed renovating the site for use as a community center, though plans have not been finalized. VICKSBURG & BRUNSWICK DEPOT HAER No. AL-195 (Page 4) Sources Consulted Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Park. Douglas Clare Purcell (Executive Director, Historic Chattahoochee Commission). Personal Interview. 10 August Central of Georgia Railway Company Collection, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia. 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. Gamble, Robert.

The Alabama Catalog: Historic American Building Survey, A Guide to the Early Architecture of the State. Tuscaloosa. University of Alabama Press. Jeane, D. Gregory and Douglas Clare Purcell. The Architectural Legacy of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley in Alabama and Georgia.