A Guide to the History of Richardson, Texas: Locations

Return to Home Page or Historic Sites

Locations

SITE OF 1873 H.&T.C. PASSENGER DEPOT

DART train downtown Richardson
A DART light rail train hurtles past the site of the original 1873 H&TC train depot, the building of which led to the founding of Richardson.

It is truly astonishing that at no time during its thirty-four-year existence, from 1873--when it was built--to 1907--when it was torn down--that no one, apparently, ever thought to take a photo of the original Houston and Texas Central Railroad passenger depot at Richardson, or if someone did, it has been lost to history. Thanks to a map that was recorded in both Dallas and Harris County deed records in 1878, only five years after the town was founed, and included in the map collection kept by Dallas real estate development firm Murphy & Bolanz, we know where it was located, but unfortunately, in the absence of a photograph, a drawing, or some blueprints, we don't know what it looked like. It appears that there is no written or published description of the building either.

If the aforementioned map was accurate, all we can be sure of is that the 1873 depot was relatively small--about a half of a block long--narrow, rectangular in shape, and almost certainly constructed of planed lumber. The 1878 town map shows that it stood on the west side of the tracks and that it extended in a southwesterly direction, starting at Smith Street (now Belt Line Road/Main Street). An equally narrow platform, almost certainly for freight, extended from the south end of the depot to Polk Street,

1873 Richardson depot map

As it happens, there are two small passenger depots in North Central Texas which give us some idea of what the Richardson depot may have looked like. One is a replica depot in Allen, a town that was also on the line of the H.&T.C., only two stops north of Richardson, and the other is an actual vintage depot now at the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas.

allen depot
Replica 1919 depot in Allen, Texas

Old Depot at Railroad Museum in Frisco TX
Old H&TC depot at railroad museum in Frisco, Texas.

LOCATION: The original 1873 H&TC depot was located on the southeast corner of Belt Line Road/Main Street and Interurban Street, on presently-vacant land alongside the DART light rail tracks that follow the same line that the Houston and Texas Central trains ran on back in 1873, when Richardson was "born." (See photo at top of page.)