Welcome to Tucson

The picture on the front of this post card is not of a locomotive. I know. I am shocked, too!! However, it is the next post card in line in my collection to be featured here, so here we go...

Our friends at Wikipedia say this about the station: The depot was built in 1907 by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP). It was designed by the SP's architect, Daniel J. Patterson, who designed a number of depots during the same era, including the San Antonio Station. In 1889, Patterson moved to San Francisco to establish a practice there. His work caught the attention of the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), which had its headquarters in San Francisco. They had him design a number of their stations and other facilities, many of which survive. Among these were the San Antonio Station, Berkeley Station (1906), the Salt Lake City Union Station, the Tucson Station, and the Willits depot. He was also the architect for the Union Station (1911) in Seattle, Washington. He designed three of the SP's hospitals, in San Francisco, El Paso, and Houston, as well as many of the railroad's industrial structures, such as electrical sub-stations and the Alameda Shops. This website gives us a bit more detail about the history of the station - and its prececessor: https://www.greatamericanstations.com/stations/tucson-az-tus/ The Tucson depot is today the pride of downtown. Originally designed in 1907 by Southern Pacific Railway (SP) staff architect Daniel Patterson and staff engineer J.D. Wallace, the original brick structure was in the Spanish Revival style then so popular throughout the southwest. The building, costing $665,000, featured a center portion with a hipped red tile roof flanked by two end towers that framed the entire composition. The windows of each tower displayed elaborate ornamentation in the Churrigueresque style, marked by expressive, sculptural detailing generally associated with Spanish architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries. A circular drive allowed visitors to pull up to the front entrance to pick up and drop off friends and family who could linger underneath the shade of the front arcade. Although quite beautiful and impressive, the 1907 depot was actually the second on the site. When the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived from Yuma in 1880, the company built a wooden station with deep eaves and windows featuring colorful awnings; President McKinley stopped here in 1900. This building was replaced because passenger and freight traffic outgrew the space. The 1907 station complex was sold to the city of Tucson in 1998 by the Union Pacific Railroad for $2.1 million dollars.

The post card was published by the Detroit Publishing Company. It was printed using what they called the "Phostint" method. After negotiations with Orell Fussli, Detroit became the sole American company to license the Swiss photochrom process, which they would eventually register in 1907 under the name Phostint.