The Buddy Holly Center

Over eighty years ago the first railroad passengers disembarked onto the brick paved platform of the Fort Worth and Denver South Plains Railway Depot in Lubbock. Freight trains stopped on a second track behind the passenger train to have their cargo unloaded onto an elevated wooden platform, then carried through overhead doors into a large freight room. Designed by prominent Fort Worth architect, Wyatt C. Hedrick, in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style, this was the largest and most elaborate of the depots built along the Lubbock-Estelline branch of the Burlington Railroad's Fort Worth and Denver City line. With ornate carved limestone detailing, paneled wood doors, and clay tile roofing, the new building was evidence that Lubbock was not the same frontier town it had been a few years earlier and, perhaps, a precursor to other surprises to be found on the Texas South Plains.

In the years following its opening, the depot became less a forerunner of things to come and more an example of what neglect can produce. Abandoned by the railroad in the early 1950s, it became a warehouse for various businesses and then a salvage yard. The building was converted into a restaurant in the mid seventies, one of the first successful examples of adaptive use in the city.

In 1979, the Lubbock City Council designated it the first Lubbock HistoricLandmark, and in 1990 the depot was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A few years later it became the anchor and namesake for a multi-block entertainment area, the Depot District. Following the closure of the restaurant in 1997, the City of Lubbock purchased the building. Newly renovated, restored, and expanded, it recently reopened as the Buddy Holly Center, a facility housing an extensive collection of Buddy Holly memorabilia, changing arts exhibits, and a gallery showcasing West Texas musicians.

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