Union Pacific Railroad Museum

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Located in the heart of downtown Council Bluffs, the Union Pacific Railroad Museum is a beautiful and unique Beaux Arts style building that originally housed the Council Bluffs Carnegie Public Library.

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[Edwin Schroeder] It was constructed in 1904 and 1905 and it was the center, or one of the centers, for the city of Council Bluffs and its cultural activities. It fit into this desire by Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate and philanthropist, to provide libraries across the entire country. So, he funded several thousand libraries over the course of 25 years. In Iowa itself, 101 public libraries were funded by Carnegie. This was one of the largest. The library had to be open to everyone. Everyone had to be accepted. So, many of the same ideas about a public library today were there in that early version. The Beaux Arts was seen as very civic-oriented. It was a very prominent style. It fit with the classical, people are interested in the classic, so Roman, Greek architecture, and you can see that in the design outside.

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[Patricia LaBounty] The impressive nature of the Beaux Arts style building is not super unlike train stations from the turn of the century. We frequently have to explain no, it was actually a library, not a train station. But they had a similar weighty important feel. Semi-institutional, you know this isn't a house. It definitely has that facade that lends itself to government or institution to it. But then I think that the Beaux Arts style is a little bit whimsical, which helps for my mission to making the museum a fun and accessible place for families. So, we don't want it to be too intimidating.

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[Narrator] The library was designed by the Chicago architecture firm Patton & Miller, which helped in the construction of more than 100 libraries around the United States.

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[Edwin Schroeder] As you come in the main door, what was the main door, they had ionic columns and then they also had the sense of arches. There were three arches as you came in. And so that ties back, once again, if you think about classical architecture there was very much a heavy use of arches there. The use of brick is a little unusual, more Roman than Greek I think, and it's a very decorative brick, it's a very thin layer of brick. When the library first opened the main entrance, and remains today, was on Pearl Street. But in 1905 when the library opened there was also another entrance that opened onto the park on Wilhelm. And that in some ways tied the library into the park and made it part of the community. In the 1950s when they did a renovation to modernize the library, they closed that north entrance and it's still there. You can see where the staircase was, but it's not used today.

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[Patricia LaBounty] Behind me is what we consider the atrium for the building. So, this would have been the original entrance, vaulted space into the building.

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[Patricia LaBounty] Once you enter into the first floor for the space, this grand atrium opens up with vaulted ceilings and curved arches that are surprising in a space this size I think and feel very impressive. They feel very weighty.

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[Edwin Schroeder] It's a very grand entrance. So, you would walk up the steps and as you came into the building where the railroad car is today, it was very dramatic. Once again, classical style. And so, it made a statement.

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[Narrator] On each side of the atrium sat two rooms, one for reading and one for children. Today, one is dedicated to the life of Abraham Lincoln.

[Edwin Schroeder] The one on the right that we're currently in was originally the children's room for the library. And what's interesting is that we've been able to keep the fireplace and also behind it you could see the secret cabinets as well where they could store things. Gradually as the library grew in size and busier, they moved the children's room upstairs for more space, and this just became another reading area.

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[Edwin Schroeder] One of the things that you can see in the reading rooms were you would have a fireplace, it was a very comfortable space as a reader, for someone to come in. You had large windows. You also used stained glass to give it a sort of upscale look. You had to rely upon natural light. And so, the windows on this level were much larger than upstairs where the stacks or where the books were stored where you didn't need as much natural light.

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[Patricia LaBounty] This building during the renovations had gorgeous woodwork and arched doorways and fan lights and stained glass and much of that is preserved in the building. Some features were maybe moved, but all of the original woodwork, if anything new was added it matched the old. It was just a beautiful job of historic preservation.

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[Narrator] In 1921, Union Pacific opened its first museum within its Omaha headquarters, launching an effort to memorialize and preserve the story of the rail lines that transformed the American West. Over time, the company outgrew its main office building and the future of the museum space and the collection it housed was up in the air.

[Patricia LaBounty] The Union Pacific is the head of a family of about 40 subsidiary railroads and six major ones. Their headquarters building was too small, so they constructed another one in the late '90s. There was no space for a museum in that building. So, the collection was essentially homeless. It was a little bit orphaned. And at the same time, this community was trying to save this beautiful library because the library had outgrown its space and this community needed a much larger community library. So, those two projects collided and in a really unusual partnership, Union Pacific's collection, a non-profit to interpret that collection and share it with the public, and the city of Council Bluffs came together and this museum was opened on May 10, 2003.

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[Patricia LaBounty] For the floor that is behind me, which this would be considered our big story, the Transcontinental Railroad, the building America story. When we started the design process on this floor, we wanted to transport visitors to another place. We wanted to provide enough of a 3D environment where we could kind of pull people out of where they thought they were and put them somewhere else. But at the same time, we wanted very much to live within the gorgeous space that we were in. So, the historical and architectural details of the building were really important to us. The first floor most visitors experience it in a counterclockwise circle where you begin and end in the atrium. And as you proceed along that route, the space becomes more and more exhibit and less and less building and then as you come out it is less and less exhibit and more and more building. And so, that was a way for us to sort of balance those two goals, to respect the architecture on the front of the building, the beautiful columns, the original windows, and so you have that sense of space and place, but as you go into the west side of the building you're transported with mountains and tunnels and big murals.

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[Patricia LaBounty] We have a lot of digital bells and whistles that bring our collection out to you. So, we have the largest collection of photographs documenting the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the world. We have a sliding map where you can literally move the screen along a map of the Transcontinental Railroad and pop out all of these different locations and then look at all these photographs because a lot of people are like oh this is history, this happened, now it's no longer a big deal. It is still a big deal, you're just not intersecting with it personally.

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[Patricia LaBounty] We are a true railroad museum. So, we are talking about the intersection of this industry that transformed the United States and impacted people daily.

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[Narrator] The renovated antiquity of the Carnegie Library and the Union Pacific Museum come together in the heart of Council Bluffs bringing to life the history of the city, its people and the Transcontinental Railroad that connected a nation.

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