Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Control Tower 19, Santa Fe Railway Milepost 51, Dallas, Dallas County, TX
Summary
Significance: Control Tower 19 is the best preserved example of three early twentieth century interlocking plants remaining in Dallas and Tarrant Counties. The tower and two one-story sheds are built in the Craftsman style, and comprise a complex which is representative of standardized service buildings which were constructed by the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad (AT&AF) as well as other carriers west of the Mississippi. These buildings represent typical plan types which were generated by AT&SF company engineers and constructed by company crews along local and branch lines within the carrier's service area. Built with greater variation than the standard plans for stations and depots, interlocking plants were constructed to control the increasing rail traffic along the company's routes through Dallas and other major transfer hubs during the early twentieth century. The building of Control Tower 19 in 1924, coincided with a major reconstruction program which AT&SF undertook in the 1920's throughout its service area. Constructed initially with a manual interlocking system to work in tandem with a second plant (Control Tower 10), Control Tower 19 was retrofitted in 1932 with the more reliable electric interlocking system, supplied by the General Railway Signal Company of Rochester, New York. This consolidated the switching functions of both towers into one, and allowed AT&SF to raze Control Tower 10, thereby reducing its labor and maintenance costs. Control Tower 19 remained in service until 1922, after Santa Fe Railway sold this section of its Dallas subdivision to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System (DART) in 1991.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N9
Survey number: HAER TX-22
Building/structure dates: 1924 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1932 Subsequent Work
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