Milwaukee Road Freight House and Depot

Between 1883 and the mid-1920s, a telegraph office and Railroad Express Agency office operated out of the building. The limestone foundation stone was probably quarried locally. The foundation is two feet thick. The brick load-bearing walls are 18” thick and 30’ high. Heavy timbers and trusses were used in the floors and roof. The original slate roof has been replaced. The building served as a freight house and passenger depot until 1955 (Hall 1966, Spaeth 1976).

The depot was built by the River Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad Co. Their railroad followed the west bank of the Mississippi River from Dubuque, Iowa to Hastings, Minnesota. At Hastings it crossed the Mississippi on the first iron railroad bridge built in Minnesota (1878) and passed up the river to terminal stations in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The original charter for this railroad was granted to the Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company in 1857. This was one of the original land grant railroads in Minnesota Territory. The Minnesota and Pacific granted a charter to the Chicago and St. Paul in 1872 (Folsom 1888: 671). The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul came into existence as a corporation in 1874. It acquired the Stillwater and Hastings Railway Co. in 1882 and laid track from Hastings to Stillwater that year. The depot was completed in 1883. The line through Stillwater became the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific in November 1926. The line was known as the "Milwaukee Road" for short (Prosser 1966: 124).

Architect Peter Nelson Hall began a historic rehabilitation of the freight house in 1977. The project renewed Stillwater’s interest in preservation and the old depot has become a successful restaurant (Broede 1978).

—Norene Roberts, Historical Reconstruction of the Riverfront: Stillwater, Minnesota, 1985