More than 74 years after the company that would become Burlington Northern Railroad was chartered in Aurora, city and railroad officials dedicated a $250,000 depot before a crowd of 5,000 people.
That dedication took place April 30, 1923, when the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad opened the two-story Classical Revival-style building to replace another depot torn down to make way for elevated tracks.
“We have been waiting for half a century for this depot, and here it is,” then-Mayor Charles Green said, according to a local newspaper account. “Aurora is witnessing a great period in her development.”
For 63 years, the depot served Aurora passengers and railroad executives who had offices there. It was shut in 1986, when the city opened the Aurora Transportation Center that abuts the historic railroad roundhouse, the home of Walter Payton’s Roundhouse Complex, on the other end of downtown.
Now, Barbara and Doretta Bates–the two sisters who spearheaded successful efforts to save the former Aurora Hotel and the oldest portion of Copley Memorial Hospital–have filed a petition with the city Historic Preservation Commission to make the depot a landmark.
Such a designation would require approval by the commission for demolition or significant exterior alterations. It also could complicate development of RiverCity Aurora, a proposed multimillion-dollar downtown rehabilitation effort.
Noting that the city’s original post office and city hall were torn down, Barbara Bates said the city should not lose another old building.
“I think it just takes away some of our history,” she said. “We have so many buildings in this city that were torn down.”
“There’s nothing more significant and important to Aurora than the railroad and certainly the Burlington since 1849,” said Al Signorelli, president of the Aurora Heritage League, which supports the designation. “There are very few families, probably, in Aurora that are not in some way tied to the railroad.”
From the late 1800s until the early 1970s, the CB&Q Railroad–later the Burlington Northern under a 1970 merger–was the major employer in Aurora.
In 1910, CB&Q railroad car shops covered 40 acres in Aurora and employed 2,406 people. The first Pullman car, Pullman sleepers and Vistadome car were built in the city.
W & M Development Inc. of St. Charles, in which Paul White is a principal, owns a 17-acre parcel on which the depot sits at 175 S. Broadway. It opposes the landmark designation, said the company’s attorney, Paul Lewis.
“It is an encumbrance of the kind that creates one more roll of red tape for any use of this property,” Lewis said. “It doesn’t meet the criteria for a landmark building.”
The city has put down earnest money on the 17 acres, which it hopes to buy and then immediately resell to RiverCity developers.
The property comprises nearly half of the 40-acre core area needed for the project, although the depot is not on land slated for initial construction of any major buildings.
Lewis noted that the Aurora Preservation Commission denied the building landmark status in 1985 when it was still owned by the Burlington Northern Railroad.
That Preservation Commission concluded it only met two of seven required criteria for landmark status. Commission staff members are conducting further research and drawing up a new report.
“Nothing has changed in the last 15 years that has made that a more architecturally significant or historically significant or more preservable building,” Lewis said.
Lewis contended the Bates sisters were trying to obstruct the RiverCity project, a contention Barbara Bates denied.
“We’re not opposed to that at all,” Bates said. “We think that’s fine, and Aurora needs something like that. We just don’t want to do it at the expense of our history.”
She said a rehabilitated depot could become part of the project.
Signorelli said it could be used as a museum, a gateway to the proposed multipurpose arena and convention center, a visitors center or as a home to restaurants and shops.
Barbara Kattermann, the city’s consultant for RiverCity, noted that Aurora Riverside Venture, the master developer, is an affiliate of Hawthorn Realty, which transformed the former Bismarck Hotel in downtown Chicago into the Hotel Allegro and Palace Theater.
Initially, the developers wanted to rehabilitate the depot, which has been boarded up for 14 years, but then they looked inside and discovered crumbling material and asbestos that would need to be removed.
“It is horrendously scary,” Kattermann said. “I’ve been in some pretty crummy, rundown buildings, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
She also said the property is in need of an environmental cleanup.
Developers concluded that fixing the depot would be too expensive, she said.
Kattermann also questioned the historical significance of the building and its architecture, comparing it unfavorably to the roundhouse, which is the oldest structure of its kind in the country and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. She also questioned what is left of the depot to preserve.
The depot, according to city historical documents, was the fifth in the city but was used longer than any other train station. It was unusual in that it had a second story with railroad offices and may be the only standing building of its type in the area, preservationists said.
Whether it qualifies for a landmark designation will be up to the Preservation Commission, whose decisions are subject to City Council appeal.
