Southern - Greeneville Depot
March 20, 1858 was an historic day in Greeneville, Tennessee. After nearly Herculean efforts by a convention of citizens holding meetings in Greeneville from 1848 to 1858, the tracks were finally complete from Bulls Gap to Greeneville and the trains began to run.
In Greeneville One Hundred Year Portrait, Richard H. Doughty quotes from a diary of Willam A. Harmon, a teacher at Rhea Academy. On March 22, 1858 the diary states: The town has been all agog today expecting the arrival of the first train of passenger cars ever at our town. Despite the fact that rain had turned the depot grounds into a quagmire, men, women, children, horses and mules came out in droves. Harmon wrote: Still they came, rapidly gathering from the four corners of the county - and all invariably finding their way west of the village to a newly erected building called in the nineteenth century a depot, that is a place of deposit for the products of the surrounding country.
After having waited and tramped the mud round the building into a fair specimen of mortar, to far in the east comes a most horrible sound bringing terror to the hearts of some and highest degree of excitement to others. At length the long expected train hove in view drawn by the engine "Greeneville" bedecked in most magnificent style by the fair hands of the Jonesboro ladies. Train arrived at near 5 o'clock p.m.
With the arrival of the train at the depot, so excited were some of the citizens, the event was given Biblical emphasis. Doughty quotes John McGaughey of Greeneville at a celebration for the railroad as saying: Fellow citizens of East Tennessee after a bondage of 58 years, since the germ of a civil community first planted on the banks of the beautiful Watauga, have comparatively speaking, crossed the Jordan to till the land, that can now be made to flow with milk and honey.
So far-fetched was this idea of an iron horse, that one man still refused to believe what he perceived as an impossiblity and a "great joke." In a book published by the Greeneville Sun entitled Bicentennial 1783-1983, he was asked again after the train arrived, in March 1858, if he now believed. To this he replied, "It may be here, but you'll never see it again. Ain't no way to turn that old iron thing around!"
On April 7, 1858, an article in the American Presbyterian, quoted the Greeneville depot agent, Mr. Galbreath, regarding freight: "sixty-six thousand five-hundred and seventy pounds of wheat, which would make over Eleven thousand bushels, in the space of seven days, to say nothing of other freights."
Another article taken entitled, "The Railroad Jubilee," from the Religious Intelligencer, June 1858, via The Morristown Gazette Mail, 1962, gave an account of "wild enthusiasm" in Greeneville on the completion of the ET&V railroad in May, 1858. Visitors from Morristown for the occasion arrived by train and were greeted with "shouts from the delighted crowd already assembled and by the firing of cannon." The Knoxville Brass Band performed, several speeches were given, and a dinner served to a crowd of "four and five thousand."
The citizens of Greeneville saw this as an "index of future business," and it proved to be true. Numerous businesses and warehouses sprouted up along the tracks near the depot in the early 1900s, especially tobacco warehouses.
The Searchlight reported on March 2, 1916 that the "traveling public are demanding a new passenger station for Greeneville." The complaint was that the waiting room is "a dingy, smoked shelter, where men, women and children are thrown in a heap with men smoking, chewing and standing around a little stove, crowding the women back and making it almost impossible for a lady to board a train or meet a friend."
January 6, 1917, the Morristown Evening Mail announced a new $25,000 passenger depot for Greeneville, which would "extend from Depot to Church Streets, with an unbrella shed reaching the entire length."
This photograph of the Greeneville Depot is from September 8, 1917. William F. Royall, second from the right, was the telegraph operator.
The Greeneville Democrat-Sun announced on January 23, 1923, that the Rotary Club would take up the topic of the new depot with the Railroad Commission "with the hope that work would soon commence on our new passenger station." March 9, 1924, the same paper reported that the Southern Railway Division Superintendent, Mr. W. D. Post, and Chief Engineer, J. A. Killian "conferred with the local committee in regard to the new station." The plan was to remodel the current depot, "making it modern and attractive and to build a new freight depot below or above town."
An article in The Greeneville Democrat-Sun, dated December 31, 1924, announces the completion of a new freight depot on West Irish Street, with all side tracks being moved to that section. The passenger depot was rebuilt and renovated "so that it is entirely changed both inside and out. The large waiting room, steam heated, with new seats, large, commodious, and well kept, with a comfortable rest room would do credit to any city."
January 1, 1957 was another historic day in Greeneville. Elvis Presley came through Greeneville on the train and stopped at the Depot!
Today...
Built in 1858, with extensive renovations in 1924, The Southern Depot in Greeneville, Tennessee, is still located on the corner of West Depot and Loretta Street.
The structure is a mixture of styles: Greek Revival with the gable roof and projecting edge, Italianate windows, not fully arched, nine-over-nine with hood moldings, and Richardsonian Romanesque with a broad, hipped roof, raking eaves and brackets, and scalloped-shingle dormers with arched louvre vents. The depot originally had two chimneys, waiting room, ticket office and freight combination station. Two entrance doors for patrons were located on the left front, with a freight door and ramp located to the right and near the center. The bay ticket window faced the tracks.
Alterations to the Greeneville Depot over the years are apparent. The arched louvre vents in the dormer are now square, and the scalloped shingle replaced with tile. The brick is in various states of age with former windows and doors now filled with brick.
There are two waiting room doors, in front and back. Most depots during this time period had separate waiting areas for white and black people.
View of the front of the Greeneville Depot from West Church Street. Before reaching the depot, the tracks pass by the Austin Company Tobacco Warehouses, which are nearby on the other side of West Church and North Loretta Streets.
Various alterations have been made to the front of the depot. What were once entrance doors are now freight doors. The ramp to the original freight door has been removed.
The bay nine-over-nine ticket window faced the tracks. Today the top of the window is boarded up, and the bricks are crumbling at the base.
The brackets are original with a more elaborate style than other East Tennessee depots. Instead of two or three long arms, the bracket has a triangular design with three post inserts.