Dearborn Station, The Clock Tower That Watched the Last Train Leave

The pink granite tower ahead used to sit above a much more dramatic roofline than the one you can see today. Dearborn Station was built in eighteen eighty three and opened to trains in eighteen eighty five, a Romanesque Revival terminal with a cluster of steep, ornate roof peaks designed by architect Cyrus Eidlitz. A fire in nineteen twenty two burned off that original roofline entirely, and when the building was repaired, the steep peaks were not rebuilt. The twelve story clock tower survived the fire essentially intact and has remained the station's signature feature ever since, the one part of the skyline that looks today roughly as it always did.

The station kept running trains for decades after that fire, serving the printing houses and travelers of the neighborhood around it, until long distance rail service finally wound down. The last intercity train to pull out from Dearborn Station was the Grand Trunk Western Railroad's International Limited, which departed on April thirtieth, nineteen seventy one, closing out eighty six years of continuous passenger service. A single commuter line kept using a platform here for a few more years, until nineteen seventy six, before the train shed itself was torn down and the tracks pulled up. The head house building, tower and all, was the one piece anyone bothered to save, and it still stands today watching over a neighborhood that no longer has any trains running behind it at all. The old train shed site behind the tower eventually became housing and a small park, so the clock that once timed departures now mostly just tells the hour for people walking their dogs.