Memphis Central Station

nchoring the southern end of the popular South Main Arts District, Memphis Central Station is a city landmark housing a hotel and Amtrak passenger facility. It is served by the City of New Orleans and offers customers connections to taxi services, city buses and the historic Memphis trolley system.

Central Station, called Grand Central Station until 1944, opened in October 1914 to serve the Illinois Central Railroad (IC) and its subsidiary, the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad (Y&MV). The new facility allowed for consolidation of services that had previously been divided between two older IC depots, one of which – known as the Calhoun Street Station – was demolished to make way for Central Station. The Calhoun Street Station had in turn replaced the city’s first railroad depot, built on the same block by the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad around 1855.

For more than half a century, Central Station shared Memphis passenger rail duties with its larger, older sister station a few blocks east on Calhoun Street – Memphis Union Station – until the latter was permanently abandoned in 1968 by the other railroads then serving the city and subsequently demolished the next year to make way for a postal facility.

The neoclassical Central Station, designed by the noted Chicago architectural firm of Graham, Burnham and Company, has a traditional three-part structure that includes a three-story base of buff colored Bedford limestone topped by a five-story red brick tower capped with an elaborate terracotta cornice. Along the street, the façade is broken into rhythmic bays divided by two-story fluted pilasters and large tripartite windows. A frieze with sculptural elements and “Central Station” carved on the Main Street side wraps around the building at the third story and is punctuated by windows.

Rail customers accessed the main waiting room, ticketing desk and other passenger areas from the street, and ascended two stories through the building to reach track level. Constructed at a time of racial segregation, there were separate entrances for white and African-American passengers, as well as separate waiting rooms, ticketing lobbies and eating facilities. The tower held offices for the IC and the Y&MV, including the passenger and freight departments, telegraphers and division and terminal superintendents.

The tracks – both through tracks and stub-end tracks that terminated at the station – were elevated above the local streets; adjacent to the station, they rested on a bed of fill held in place by retaining walls. In addition to increasing pedestrian and motorist safety by separating the busy tracks from the street network, the track elevation allowed for installation of a tunnel network beneath the tracks where baggage, freight, express and mail could be shuttled across the facility without interfering with passenger movement at track level. Goods were moved between the tunnels and platforms via hydraulic elevators. Altogether, the station building, track elevation and other site work cost about $1.4 million.

Over the years, Central Station was also served by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway. After the initial abandonment of Union Station in 1964, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad also rerouted its trains to Central Station for a couple of years. By the time newly-created Amtrak took over most of the nation’s intercity passenger rail service in 1971, its daily City of New Orleans (Chicago-Memphis-New Orleans) was the only passenger train serving Memphis. Central Station, originally built to handle thousands of passengers daily, fell into a steady and noticeable structural and cosmetic decline, especially after the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad, successor to the IC, moved its divisional offices out of the building in the 1980s.

After acquiring ownership of the property, the Memphis Area Transportation Authority (MATA) broke ground in 1998 on an ambitious $23.2 million campaign, funded in large part through a federal grant, to completely renovate and restore Central Station as a premier transportation, commercial and residential center. Work was completed in 1999. In addition to an Amtrak facility, the refreshed station contained apartments, a full service police precinct and commercial space. The former grand waiting room was transformed into a first class ballroom available for rent.

The station’s renovation not only rejuvenated the structure itself, but also helped jumpstart development in the surrounding neighborhood. What was once a depressed area of Memphis marked by old warehouses and vacant lots gained a new lease on life in part thanks to Central Station’s proud story.

Great American Stations