The L & N Railroad Depot in the Hopkinsville Commercial Historic District of Hopkinsville, Kentucky is a historic railroad station on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad in 1892.
The year 1832 saw the first of many attempts to woo a railroad to Hopkinsville. This first attempt was to connect Hopkinsville to Eddyville, Kentucky. In 1868 Hopkinsville finally obtained a railroad station, operated by the Evansville, Henderson, & Nashville Railroad. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad acquired the railroad in 1879.
The Hopkinsville depot is a single-story frame building with a slate roof. It has six rooms: a Ladies Waiting room (the room closest to the street), a General Waiting Room, a Colored Waiting Room, a baggage room (the furthest room from the street), a ticket office (the only room which connected to all three waiting rooms), and a ladies' restroom. Immediately outsides were warehouses for freight, usually tobacco.
During its operating years, the Hopkinsville depot was a popular layover spot for those traveling by train. It was the only Louisville & Nashville station between Evansville, Indiana and Nashville, Tennessee where it was legal to drink alcohol. Hopkinsville got the nickname "Hop town" due to train passengers asking the conductors when they would arrive at Hopkinsville, so they could "hop off and get a drink".
The Hopkinsville L & N Railroad Depot was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 1, 1975. It is now used by the Pennyrile Arts Council. The organization was founded in 1977 to promote culture in the Hopkinsville area. CSX, which bought out the Louisville & Nashville, still run trains on the tracks next to the depot, but do not stop.
Famous quotes containing the word railroad:
“The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)