This old depot was built in 1857 by the L&N to serve as both a passenger and freight depot. The back part of the building was then, as now, used for freight, and the front part used as the passenger department and ticket office. There were four rooms downstairs, one for the ticket office, with two for the white and colored passengers and one small room for the baggage and express department. The two upstairs rooms were for the officials.
The first branch line run by the L&N was to Lebanon in 1857 where the road stopped at that time. The train was run into the back part of the building where after unloading passengers and freight it remained over night. That old track still remains. When Gen. John Hunt Morgan attacked and captured the town July 5, 1863, Colonel Chas. S. hanson, USA, made his headquarters in the depot in defending the town. Twenty-six shells entered the roof but Morgan was not able to depress his guns enough to do damage to the lower part of the building. After Col. Hanson's surrender at 1:20 p.m., Gen. Morgan set fire to the building. However, the fire burned only the roof, floors and partitions leaving walls standing erect and practically undamaged. All the L&N had to do to restore the building was to rebuild the frame inside of the structure leaving the outside of the structure as it was originally.
The
line was extended to Knoxville in 1865, and in 1884 the company bought an old hotel building across the tracks where it installed it's —— and passenger department. in 1865 the Road built a brick columned overhand on the north side of the old brick depot to shield passengers. This was removed some years later.
Local historian, Noah Hayes, wrote to the L&N Railroad Company in 1962 asking information as to whether the depot was rebuilt entirely, or whether the burned out interior was replaced using the outside (original) walls. Here is an excerpt from the reply he received Sept. 4, 1962 from Mr. Julian L. Jones, manager and Editor of the L&N Magazine: "The L&N's pertinent Annual Report (that for the year ending June 1864) merely states that the depot building, the engine house and the cars which were at the depot were all burned by General Morgan's forces during the capture of lebanon on July 4, 1863. However, the damage to the depot must have been rather superficial since the record in our engineering of buildings' office here at Louisville shows the structure as having been built in 1857, with repairs extended as needed throughout the years. The records make no specific mention of the repairs necessitated by Morgan's raid. We believe it would be correct to identify the present structure as the original one, subject to the qualification mentioned; that is, that the depot
was somewhat damaged during the Civil War and was repaired."
This appears to be conclusive evidence that the present depot with the exception of the renewed framce interior is the one the L&N originally built — the first brick depot on the line from Louisville to Lebanon — in 1857. The railroad company put a plaque on the building in 1963 stating it was constructed in 1857.
Track was abandoned in 1991 and removed a short time later. The Depot structure was vandalized and burned in 1992. C.S.X then tore the remaining walls down.
Efforts are being made to rebuild the Depot structure.
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