1883 UNION (TRAIN) DEPOT STOCK CERTIFICATE KANSAS CITY MISSOURI. INCLUDES THE TAB FROM THE U D STOCK CERTIFICATE BOOK. COLLECTIBLE. 3 PIECES.
Union Depot
Union Avenue
completed 1878, demolished 1915
by Susan Jezak Ford
When Union Depot was built in Kansas City?s West Bottoms, it was frequently called the ?Jackson County Insane Asylum? by those who believed that the city would never have a need for such a large train station. It did not take long, however, for the city to outgrow the immense, new showplace.
Kansas City was home to 60,000 citizens when the depot was built in 1878. The fashionable, elegant building replaced a two-room structure designed by Octave Chanute. The site for Union Depot was acquired from early Kansas City leaders Kersey Coates and William H. Hopkins. In 1869 the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, the first railroad to reach Kansas City, purchased part of the site for railroad tracks from the two property owners. The Missouri River and Gulf Railroad bought more land from the men in 1870 for Kansas City?s first train station. The city condemned 6.5 additional acres for the new Union Depot in 1878. Altogether, the depot building?the second Union Depot in the country?and the adjoining land cost the city $300,000. (St. Louis was the first city where the various railroad companies decided to locate their terminal facilities in one location.)
The ornate Union Depot was built parallel to the bluffs of the West Bottoms and stood between the railroad tracks and Union Avenue. As one approached the station from the upper elevation of downtown Kansas City, the towers of the depot recalled the faraway skylines of Paris, Vienna, or Berlin. ?It is one of the most picturesque and attractive buildings in the United States,? The Kansas City Star reporter wrote. The writer went on to describe the building as designed in the Renaissance style and ?somewhat Frenchy? with its mansard roof and Parisian towers. ?The architect has given us the handsomest and most pleasing union of two of the most pleasing styles in modern architecture,? he concluded. The depot opened for business on April 8, 1878.
The original stock holders of the Union Depot
THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY
THE ATCHISON TOPEKA AND SANTA FE. RAILROAD CO.
THE CHICAGO ALTON RAILRO0AD COMPANY
THE CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND & PACIFIC RAILWAY CO.
THE HANNIBAL & ST. JOSEPH RAILROAD COO.
THE KANSAS CITY, FT. SCOTT & GULF RAILROAD CO.
THE KANSAS CITY, ST. JOSEPH & COUNCIL BLUFF R. R. CO.
THE MISSOURI PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY
THE SOUTHERN KANSAS RAILWAY COMPANY
THE WABASH RAILROAD COMPANY
George H. Nettleton
Railroad
Baron
1831-1896
by
Daniel Coleman
At the peak of his career, George Nettleton
lived in a West Bluffs mansion overlooking the Kansas City Stock Yards and
Union Depot, both of which he managed in addition to the 800 miles of railroad
track and 2,000 employees under his command. Nettleton was as close to a
railroad baron as Kansas City could boast in the late 1800s, with the exception
that he was not an owner of the various lines he controlled.
George
H. Nettleton was born November 13, 1831, in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts,
located just northwest of Springfield.
The 1850s saw Nettleton’s career
as an engineer advancing steadily along with the miles of track laid by the
various railroads for which he worked. . He served for a time as an assistant,
then general superintendent of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad. The
Hannibal Bridge opened under Nettleton’s watch in 1869. Nettleton was also
instrumental in the laying of one of the earliest rail lines in the Kansas City
area when he oversaw completion of the Cameron to Kansas City road.
In 1872, Nettleton became the
general superintendent of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, and
from his headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, supervised the line’s extension as far
as the state’s western border. He moved to Kansas City in 1874 and turned his
attention toward developing the growing transportation center his railroad
endeavors had helped to create.
He
organized and managed the Kansas City Stockyards, and, at the helm of the Union
Depot Company, administered the city’s first major railroad station and yards
in the West Bottoms. Nettleton was an important link to eastern capitalists who
backed Kansas City business ventures. He helped incorporate the First National
Bank of Kansas City and served as president of the Fort Scott & Memphis
Railway.
In the early 1890s, they built a
12-room, brick mansion on the West Bluffs at 7th Street overlooking Nettleton’s
industrial domain, but he died only a few years later at age 64, on March 26,
1896. In 1900, Julia Nettleton donated the structure to be used as a home for
elderly women, and although these occupants moved to new quarters in 1917.