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STILWELUS ^ream
by ESTY MORRIS
Kansas City's great Union Station came to railroad builder in a dream!
THE year weis 1902 and Arthur E. Stilwell paced the bedroom floor of his home at 720 E. Armour Boulevard. He walked to the window and looked out upon a motionless Kansas City. From the far distance he could hear the faint puffing of (locomotives. He slammed the window to shut out any noise or suggestions of trains. He had enough for one day.
There had been a confused, wran[liigling discussion as to where the proposed new Union Station for Kansas City should be built. The Commercial Club favored the old Tenth and State '9 Line location; another group wanted ft to build it in the west bottoms; the (^railroads wanted a new station, but they didn't want to move any more rails than they actually had to.
Stilwell, who had built the Kansas City, Gulf and Pittsburgh Rail^way, watched it grow into the Kan[jiQ 6215 City Southern, felt it slip away into receivership, and who was then working on organization of the Kan
sas City, Mexico and Orient railway, was up to his neck in railroads.
Finally he left the window and dropped off to sleep. Two hours later, at five o'clock in the morning, he was busy at his desk with diagrams of tracks, trainsheds and ticket offices. A location between Main street and Broadway on 20th and 21st street had come to him in a dream!
He dreamed also of a company made up of the various railroads to operate the terminal. He put the results of his dream down on paper and presented them at the meeting of railroad executives the next day.
Not that year nor the next, but 12 years later, Stilwell's dream came true. Kansas City actually did build its new 10-million dollar terminal on the exact site where Stilwell had dreamed it should be.
History of railroads in eastern Missouri dates back to 1849 when wooden, hand-hewn rails were laid for the old Independence and Wayne City railroad, a distance of four miles. Its rolling stock consisted of rickety wooden cars towed by twenty mule teams. The redeeming feature was the depot, a neat two-story build