Groundsite Image Gallery
Santa Fe Railroad Station
Artist: Hughes, Langston
Height: 0.000"
Width: 0.000"
Santa Fe Railroad, 413 East Seventh St. (1882)
Langston Hughes saw this 1882 depot as a boy. The train company routed sixteen daily trains through Lawrence at the turn of the century.
Hughes’s mother often worked in Kansas City and most likely would arrive and depart from here. When Hughes stayed at 731 New York St., he could walk here to greet her.
Hughes went to visit his mother on the train by himself. He learned to protect his money and, and later his passport, by pinning them inside his coat pocket, the way my grandmother used to tell me to do in order to protect my valuables when, as a child, she put me on the train in Lawrence to go visit my mother in Topeka or Kansas City (190).
E.S. Tucker took this photo about 1895.