TheMinneapolis Great Northern Depot, also known asGreat Northern Station,[2] was a passengerrailroad station which servedMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA. It was built in1913 and demolished in1978. It was located onHennepin Avenue next to theHennepin Avenue Bridge and across the street from the mainMinneapolis Post Office.
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The station was sometimes called theMinneapolis Union Depot, which actually was the name of the previous station on the opposite side of Hennepin Avenue that had been in use for 30 years. The older Union Depot was razed; today, that site is used for loading docks by the central downtown Minneapolis Post Office. TheStone Arch Bridge was built to serve the original Minneapolis Union Depot, but later provided access to the Great Northern Depot. TheMinneapolis BNSF Rail Bridge, an older crossing of theMississippi River to the north, also served the depot with a cutoff track located on the bridge.
The Minneapolis Great Northern Depot was built to serve the railroad empire ofJames J. Hill. It was constructed at the height of theCity Beautiful movement, at a time when Minneapolis was striving to revive the decaying Bridge Square area. The building was designed byCharles Sumner Frost, who had earlier designed theChicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Depot Freight House and Train Shed, and then later theSaint Paul Union Depot.[2] Frost had also supervised the construction of theNavy Pier in Chicago and theMaine State Building at theColumbian Exposition of 1893.
The Depot was constructed of brick and reinforced concrete. It was faced with lightKettle River sandstone. It was designed in aBeaux-Arts style with aDoriccolonnade facing Hennepin Avenue. The train tracks ran Northwest–Southeast along the Mississippi river, under Hennepin Avenue and into a pass-through train shed.
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Passenger train service through the depot declined from a peak of 125 daily trains during World War II to just one route whenAmtrak began operation in 1971—theEmpire Builder.[3] Amtrak opted to consolidate all of its Twin Cities service at the Great Northern Depot, shuttering St. Paul's Union Depot.
Traffic rebounded very slightly in the following years, as theArrowhead,North Coast Hiawatha, andTwin Cities Hiawatha entered service, though these sometimes operated as combined trains from Chicago or only served the depot on alternating days. The trains continued to stop at the depot until theMidway station opened inSaint Paul, roughly halfway between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, in 1978.[1]
The Great Northern Depot was demolished later that year. The area lay vacant and was adjacent to the Berman Buckskin building and the Chicago Great Western railway freight warehouse. All these buildings were torn down to make way for development; the site is occupied by the third and currentFederal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis building. The newTarget Field station for theMetrolight rail line andNorthstarcommuter rail line was constructed at the site ofTarget Field alongBNSF Railway'sWayzata Subdivision. It is located five blocks west and two blocks north of the former depot.
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It was the destination for trains of several railroads that served Minneapolis, including,
Thenamed trains Great NorthernEmpire Builder, Chicago, Burlington and QuincyTwin Cities Zephyr, Chicago and North WesternTwin Cities 400, and Northern PacificNorth Coast Limited either passed through or terminated at the Depot.
The following railroad depots that once existed in Minneapolis have been demolished.
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