ISBN10: 081665610X, ISBN13: 9780816656103, [publisher: University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota] Hardcover Hardcover. St. Paul Union Depot was among the busiest and best-known places in the cityone of the largest depots in the nation and St. Pauls link to the world. It had nine platforms, twenty-one tracks, and well over 140 trains coming and going each day. At its peak in the 1920s, the Union Depot processed more than twenty million pieces of mail each year. Construction of the new depot began in 1917, among the burned remains of the previous depot, and was finally finished in 1926 as both a monument to St. Pauls urban growth and its gateway to the Northwest. Practical rather than pretentious, the Union Depot served St. Paul for more than fifty yearscomplete with a restaurant, drugstore, infirmary, and playrooms for children. Millions of people bought tickets and walked through its lobby and concourse to board waiting trains. It sent children to summer camps and schools, and young men and women to wars. The depot hosted U.S. presidents and presidents-to-be, international royalty, famous authors, movie stars, and the rich and famousbut it also sheltered the homeless and the troubled seeking a warm place on a cold night. Though it closed in 1971 after years of declining passenger rail service, today the St. Paul Union Depot is once again being revived as a Twin Cities transit and commercial hub, just as rail travel throughout the United States experiences a renewal. ...