From train depot to Wellness Depot

Several times a day, the one tangible manifestation of the newly industrial Milledgeville-the Central Railroad’s trains-would interrupt the city in an inferno of soot, steam and power, stopping at the Central of Georgia Depot.

With flowing, graceful brackets supporting its eaves, low square towers and a foundation of substantial brick, the Central of Georgia Depot was built in 1853 on West Greene Street in Milledgeville, Ga. Constructed in an architecturally simplistic way, the depot was the Milledgeville-Eatonton branch for the Central Railroad’s line from Savannah to Macon.

“The depot’s design was considered ‘Italiate’ with brackets under the roof,” Dr. Bob Wilson, Georgia College & State University’s chief historian, said.

The Central of Georgia Depot was built as a rural iteration of ‘The Railroad Style.’ This style signified a plain, wooden frame which was popular in the 19th century, and showed the city’s monetary loss caused by the Civil War.

Following an order to destroy all the railroads and depots they could find in the South, General Sherman’s Union troops destroyed the original Central of Georgia Depot during the Civil War in 1864.

The original depot was only partially rebuilt in a makeshift way after the war. It was reconstructed to less than half its original size with one end left unfinished and boarded up until 1879.

The Central of Georgia Depot represented a new economic lifestyle in the minds of Milledgeville residents, serving as a gateway to the progress of the future, broadening the city’s trade and prosperity and widening the availability for students to attend college.

Cargos of women were brought into Milledgeville by train to attend Georgia State College for Women.

The train that stopped at the depot was known as the “Beauty Special” and later renamed the “Peach Special” for the female passengers who were students of GSCW.

Lorette Smith, an 83-year-old woman who attended GSCW in the 1930s said arriving at the Central of Georgia Depot was perhaps one of the most exciting events she recalls from college.

“All of the young men in Milledgeville would bring their steamer trucks and meet the girls at the depot,” Smith said. “They wanted to see which girls were pretty. They would help haul our stuff to the dormitory.”

Mr. D.M. Rogers, manager of the Central of Georgia Depot in the early 1900s, created a special portable ticket booth and brought it to the girls’ dormitories. His reasoning behind this development was to protect the young women from walking down to the depot alone from main campus to buy train tickets.

Charles Brown, a retired teacher from Georgia Military College and researcher of Georgia railroads, remembered a story that his mother, who attended GSCW and rode the “Beauty Special” in the 1920s, told him.

“My mother rode the ‘Beauty Special,’ Brown said. “All the girls would move in during late September with all their summer and winter clothes and half the world, and wouldn’t leave until Christmas. This proved to be one of her favorite annual events.”

In 1967, when the popularity of riding in trains had decreased, the Central of Georgia Depot closed. The same year, it was leased by three different building supply companies and served as a storage area for wood, sheetrock and other materials until 1980.

It was neglected until 1989 when Dr. Edwin Speir, president of GC&SU at the time, wanted to purchase the depot.

“Dr. Speir wanted the depot for the university,” Brown said. “He received the title in July of that year and started plans for building and land underlying.”

The depot was purchased from an $800,000 Transportation Enhancement Program grant from the Department of Transportation and was used as a storage area for theatre sceneries until recently.

Finally complete after almost $1.2 million, the Central of Georgia Depot is currently GC&SU’s Wellness Depot, a fitness center for students.

Renovating the depot in 2003, Garbutt, Inc. maintained the main architectural aspects from when it was originally built in 1853.

“The whole purpose was to preserve the depot,” Joe Bellflower, director of the Wellness Depot said. “They did a great job of keeping its original character.”

The same wood and bricks were kept in tact, along with all of the rafters in the internal middle portion. The graffiti on the bricks remain untouched.

“Being able to live in a town with such great history behind it is just perpetual,” Wilson said. “The depot remains part of a rich, architectural heritage that we have. It’s a legacy of something that wasn’t just created yesterday.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 17 2004. Filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry