(rshsdepot) Knoxville, TN

["Bernie Wagenblast" <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

Old Southern depot is celebrating centennial

By FRED BROWN, brownf_@_knews.com
The Knoxville News Sentinel

October 5, 2003

This is a love story about trains, a depot, thoroughbred horses, the Gilded
Age, Victorian wealth and a special Pullman car now at home in Knoxville.

You won't want to miss this, and if you are left with a hankering for more,
there is a really good place to find it today. Just visit the Southern
Railway Station Centennial Celebration, 306 W. Depot St., from 1-5 p.m.

Look up the 1915 Pullman, "Seminole." It's hard to miss with its splendid
dark green and gold colors as it sits on a siding at the 100-year-old depot.
It is owned today by the Old Smoky Railway Museum, but its history is as
grand as the depot's.

A short list of the cast of characters begins with Abraham Kingsley "King"
Macomber of Pasadena, Calif., and his wife, Myrtle Harkness of the
Harknesses of New York, early partners in Standard Oil, Inc.

Macomber's history reads like something out of the era of great explorers.
As a young man he went to Central Africa with Maj. Frederick Russell
Burnham, a mineralogist surveying mineral deposits for the British. While
there, Macomber met Cecil Rhodes, the British business baron who founded the
DeBeers Mining Co. and eventually amassed a fortune in the diamond trade
that now funds the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University.

When the King and Myrtle exchanged wedding vows in 1899, it was a merger,
not a marriage. She was worth millions, and he had founded the Los Angeles
Trust Co.

Other than themselves, the King and Myrtle were passionate about
thoroughbred horses. It was only natural. Myrtle's father, Lamon V.
Harkness, an heir to a Standard Oil fortune, had established a 6,000-acre
horse farm near Lexington, Ky., where Myrtle spent time as a young girl when
she wasn't at her father's Fifth Avenue home in New York and attending all
the right societal events of the Gilded Age.

The King and Myrtle purchased a 10,000-acre ranch just south of San Jose in
1906. They were not only expert riders but also had a keen eye for
horseflesh that served them well when they later started a breeding stable.

The King and Myrtle were living in Paris, but World War I sent them back to
the States in 1915. Myrtle's father died soon after their return, leaving
her a vast and growing oil fortune. The couple built three homes in
California, employing a staff that included a butler, a cook, a chauffeur, a
porter and two maids.

Myrtle and the King returned to France after World War I ended. They
purchased the entire stock of a California stable and had the animals
shipped to France. That boatload of horses included one named War Cloud,
that later returned to the States and won the second leg of the 1918
Preakness. The Preakness that year had so many entries that the field had to
be broken into two sections.

In 1920 the horseracing world was set on its ear when the King and Myrtle
purchased William K. Vanderbilt's entire racing stable for about $2 million.
The deal included not only over 150 thoroughbreds but also Vanderbilt's
chateau just 20 miles outside of Paris in Poissy and a 500-acre stud farm in
Normandy with a chateau built by Catherine de Medici.

To get around to the races in the States, the King had the Pullman Co. in
Chicago build a special railroad car with three large staterooms, a room for
his wife's personal maid, a kitchen, dining area and a room for the crew
that worked his Pullman alone. Dubbed the "Seminole," the car also had a
bell system that allowed occupants of the staterooms to call for service
from the crew.

Most of the car's windows were arched and glazed with pressed-prism glass
with a frosted surface that allowed light in but preserved the privacy of
those in the car.

Each stateroom had its own toilette. In his personal stateroom, Macomber had
the Pullman Co. install a large metal cabinet with a safe inside it that
railroad experts believe may be one of a kind.

"The car was made for the Macombers so they could follow the racing
circuit," said David Duncan, a Knoxville caterer who is a railroad buff and
a member of the Old Smoky Mountain Railway Museum.

"The safe beneath his berth was for all the cash they carried and to place
their horses' winnings in," said Duncan, who, along with fellow museum
member J.C. Tumblin, has researched the history of the special Pullman car
and its owners.

The "Seminole" was purchased by the railway museum in 1992 and now sits on a
sidetrack at the Southern Railway Station.

Duncan said the Macombers would begin the racing season in Louisville, Ky.,
and then make for such racing meccas as Pimlico in Maryland and Belmont and
Saratoga in New York.

Duncan thinks it's possible the Macombers may have passed through Knoxville
in the course of their racing travels.

"The Southland was a popular train for L&N," Duncan said. "It was one of the
ones that offered the best service. So it would be nothing for the King to
have his car hitched to the Southland, which would then come through
Knoxville on its way to Florida. It is altogether likely the 'Seminole,'
with the King and Myrtle on board, came through here."

You can catch just a glimpse of that glittering past at the Centennial of
the Southern Railway Station, one of the great old buildings in Knoxville
completed in 1903. It was designed by Southern Railway architect Frank P.
Milburn, who had built train stations across the South.

Duncan, Tumblin and Albert E. Pope have written a booklet about the Southern
Railway Station Centennial that gives a detailed explanation of the history
and importance of the building. The booklet will be on sale at the event
today.

Mail, express, telegraph, dining rooms and baggage areas were in the
station's lower level. Ticket offices and segregated waiting rooms were in
the upper level. A modernization project in 1945 did away with the station's
chimneys and its once-magnificent clock tower, which appeared to be in
structural difficulty.

Architectural features that remain include corbel-stepped gables, arched
windows, fireplaces featuring inscriptions by the Scottish poet Robert
Burns, coffered ceilings in the former waiting rooms and the old restaurant
on the ground level.

Passenger service stopped in 1970, leaving the building vacant. It and
suffered fire damage and vandalism until it was purchased in 1988 by the
Southern Station Partnership.

The station was renovated in 1989, and a year later it won a first-place
Renovation Award from Commercial Renovation Magazine. Today the upstairs
serves as the architectural offices of Bullock Smith & Partners.

The station looks today mcuh as it might have when the "Seminole" perhaps
rumbled through, carrying the King and Myrtle to yet another horseracing
venue to see War Cloud stretching out along the inside rail, heading for the
wire.

Senior writer Fred Brown may be reached at 865-342-6427.

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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