Today, IndyGo, the Indianapolis bus system, is the only mass transit in the city. A century ago, that was not the case. Trolleys ran on the street railway in the city, which at that time was only a part of Marion County. Interurbans and steam railroads served outlying areas bringing people into the city. Little remains of those early forms of transit; occasionally street construction reveals some buried rails while narrow strips of over-grown land and bicycle trails follow the pathways of railroads long past. A few prominent relics of a bygone era are depots that survive, having been repurposed to serve the modern age.
The many railroads coursing their way along the cardinal points towards Union Station at the center of Indianapolis built depots along their routes in the peripheral areas of Marion County and suburban parts of the city to facilitate commuter travel. In the early years of the twentieth century there were ten depots scattered around Indianapolis “at which tickets are sold and passengers received and discharged,” and another couple dozen around the townships.
Long gone depots include the brick Romanesque style “Bee Line Depot” or “The Little Depot” near what is now Massachusetts Ave. and East Tenth St. Four railroads — the Big Four (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad), Monon, Lake Erie & Western, and the Pennsylvania provided a “traveling convenience” to the residents of the near northeast side of Indianapolis. On the westside of the city in the section called Moorefield, at the crossing in the 200 block of North Belmont Ave, once stood the small frame “Twin Depots” of the Big Four and Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroads. In what is now the Near Northside Neighborhood, east of 22nd St. and Winthrop Ave. stood the Twenty-second Street Depot where all Monon trains stopped “and considerable business is transacted there.”
Two suburban communities — Brightwood and Irvington — had depots. The Brightwood depot was a one-story frame structure that stood on the east side of what is now Sherman Dr. “on an elevation above the town.” It was painted “bright ‘Big Four’ yellow.” In Irvington, the small brick Pennsylvania Railroad depot on the east side of South Audubon Rd. stood on the north side of the tracks across from Bonna Ave. “in a pretty spot . . . surrounded by trees.”
Depots were more than transportation hubs with the coming and going of passengers. They were a community’s social center, a gathering place for mostly young men and old men, who were friends of the station agent, spending their idle time sitting around the stove in waiting rooms, offering opinions on the issues of the day. Railroaders living near the depot would stop by to keep company with the agent and swap stories of the “road.”
Beyond the old city precincts, scattered around Marion County at places like New Augusta and Acton, Broad Ripple and Southport, and Castleton and Bridgeport, localities that were whistle stops on long forgotten railroads, only the wind rushes down abandoned right-of-ways past depots that now only exist in faded photographs and graying memories.
At Castleton, the old Lake Erie & Western Railroad depot, dating to around 1904, served area residents wanting to come into Indianapolis to shop, conduct business, or visit friends. In time, passengers no longer came to the platform; Norfolk & Western took over the quaint stop where only the occasional freight shipment was dropped off or picked up. Finally, the depot closed, fell into disrepair, and was sold in 1984. It was moved to a new location across the tracks at 6725 East 82nd St. and restored as Smilin Babe Produce stand. In recent years the old depot was Chateau de Pique Winery.
Two depots on the Monon line survive in situ, one at Broad Ripple and one west of the State Fair Grounds just north of 38th St. The wood frame 1908 Broad Ripple depot, wedged on a narrow strip between Cornell Ave. and the Monon at the southeast corner of East 64th St., served passengers for years before being repurposed in 1960 as the Whistle Stop Sausage House which at that time was the only sausage and cheese shop in Indianapolis. In later years, the Whistle Stop expanded into a deli café before transitioning in 2010 as Brics Ice Cream Shop.
The Boulevard Depot, at 38th St. and the Monon, opened in the summer of 1922 and quickly became a popular passenger boarding place. Four times a day, Monon riders could leave for Chicago either in the morning on The Hoosier, at noon on the Chicago Limited, in the afternoon on the Monon Flyer, or in the wee morning hours on the Mid-night Special. In 1954, the Monon offered an educational tour to first through fourth graders in the Indianapolis and township schools that departed the Boulevard depot. (Does anyone remember that trip?) Crowds of youngsters and their chaperones paid 65¢ (2021: $6.50) to ride a passenger train on a fifty-mile round trip to Sheridan, Indiana. The venerable depot closed in 1959 and was used into the late sixties as Monon offices before becoming commercial space, first as The Chalet Cheese & Sausage Shoppe and then HamBeens Junction, a taco house, and an ice cream store.
Another surviving depot is in Pike Township at Augusta. Built around 1895, the depot was saved in 1963 by three sisters — Olive, Emma, and Mary Purdy — who bought it. Located just south of their home at 7135 Purdy St, the sisters turned the depot into a private museum which they maintained until their deaths.
Neighborhood railroad depots were the community centers of yesteryear, and with their gradual loss there was a dimming of communal spirit. While contemporary mass transit provides the vehicle for commuters and frequent riders may get to know one another, the unifying space and identity that depots offered are now but impression on pages of recorded memory.
