Livingston Depot

The Northern Pacific Railway dedicated Livingston station in the summer of 1902: an Italianate complex of red and yellow brick built over roughly three years for $112,000, designed by Reed and Stem — the Minnesota firm that served as first architects for New York's Grand Central Terminal — and dressed in ornate terra cotta, from lions' heads to the NP's trademark yin-yang emblem. It replaced an 1882 wooden depot that burned and an 1888 brick successor outgrown by the affluent passenger traffic the NP was bringing west, and because it handled both the main line and the Yellowstone Park Branch, Livingston served as the primary rail gateway to Yellowstone National Park for about a quarter century while also headquartering the NP's Rocky Mountain division. The 1970 merger folded the NP into Burlington Northern, and Amtrak's North Coast Hiawatha made the final passenger stop in October 1979. When BN could not find a buyer by the mid-1980s, local citizens lobbied for the building's donation to the city and created the nonprofit Livingston Depot Foundation, which carried out an extensive restoration; the depot reopened in the summer of 1987 as the Livingston Depot Center, the museum and community center that has anchored downtown ever since.