The Union Depot stood on Water Street at the bottom (far east) of Myrtle Street from 1887 to 1960.
The photograph of the Union Depot looks northwest from the river side of the building. This is the view visitors on trains would see when arriving from the south in the winter. Pictured below is a postcard of the Union Depot from a different perspective, looking northeast from the street side of the building. Just north of the Union Depot is the Stillwater Market building for grain, flour, and feed.
Built in the Greek Revival style, the Union Depot was adorned by arches, gables, and dormers and featured a 75-foot-tall clock tower at its northwest corner. The exterior was red sandstone topped with a slate roof. The interior featured stained glass windows, wood paneling and flooring, and built-in fireplaces with terra cotta tiling. Among its twenty rooms were two restaurants, a telegraph office, a ladies’ room, a cigar stand room, and even a dance hall on the upper level. The depot also contained living quarters for the station master.
Stillwater had three rail lines and the Union Depot serviced all three, with one train leaving the city every hour. The station also sold “lumberjack tickets” in hundred-packs to the lumber companies. The lumber companies would hire men, give them each a ticket, and send them by the trainload to the northern pineries in Mora, Willow, River, Cloquet, Duluth and beyond.
Rail travel significantly declined in the decades following the 1910s, and passenger service from the depot ended in the 1920s. The depot officially closed in 1954 and was torn down in 1960. It was replaced by Hooley’s Supermarket which stood on the site until it was torn down in 1993. In 2019, the Water Street Inn built a hotel addition on the Union Depot site and incorporated a clock tower in the location of the depot’s original tower.
This photograph is part of the John Runk Photograph Collection, which can be viewed in the library’s St. Croix Collection. The postcard is part of the library’s postcard collection featuring local landmarks.
