Albany Railroad Depot Historic District

Albany's historic railroad depot occupies about three acres beside the Flint River, two blocks northeast of the central business district. The district holds three railroad buildings and a brick street. The 1857 depot is a long, low brick building with massive timber roof trusses, bracketed eaves and built-in ventilators, described as a rare and relatively intact antebellum station in Georgia. The 1913 Union Depot is a dark-red brick Prairie style station with broad hipped roofs and two porte-cochere entrances. A World War I-era Railway Express Agency building with Spanish Mission parapets stands between them, and a 1913 brick street with streetcar tracks leads to the depot. The complex served as Albany's center for freight and passengers for more than a century. In the early twentieth century it handled seven rail lines and thirty-five daily trains. Passenger service ended in 1971, and the buildings were later acquired for a cultural center with a museum and planned planetarium.