The Central’s passenger depot is one of the oldest surviving train stations in the nation. It is a head or terminal-type station, more common in Europe, which employs a high-style head-house for passenger services that is connected to a train shed with platforms. The passenger depot headhouse was begun in 1860 but not completed until 1876 (due to the disruption of the Civil War). The classically inspired design, employing Savannah Grey brick, includes round-arched windows separated by pilasters and a Doric frieze with grilled vents separated by triglyphs. The main floor housed the ticket office and baggage room as well as separate waiting rooms and lavatories for white and black patrons. Offices were located on the second floor and the lower level housed a restaurant. The passenger train shed behind the depot, completed in 1861, displays impressive rows of brick arches on the exterior and now houses the Savannah History Museum. The shed is noteworthy for its long-span trussed roof, which is the earliest surviving U.S. example of a tricomposite truss, consisting of cast-iron, wrought-iron, and wood components. The cast-iron struts connect to the wrought-iron tension rods via spoked disks that resemble pulleys, visually tying the structure together (as is evident from across Louisville Road to the west as well). The passenger shed “umbrella” extension was added in 1901 to accommodate longer trains. The adjacent Visitors Center parking lot was originally the cotton freight yard; the crenellated cotton-yard gates facing Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard were completed in 1856 and include guard rooms for sentries protecting the valuable freight. Along with the adjacent wrought-iron Wickersham fence ornamented with cast-iron cast-ons, the gates were part of a series of walls and fences that surrounded the entire thirty-three-acre complex.