This passenger station was built as the headquarters for J. A. Kemp and Frank Kell’s railroads: the Wichita Falls and Northwestern, the Wichita Falls and Southern, and the Wichita Valley railway companies. Kemp and Kell developed the railroads to ship grain for their flour mills and enhance the economic prospects of Wichita Falls. The station was originally twice as long; the southern half burned in 1974. The two-story, tawny brick structure has contrasting red brick quoins, window lintels, and an Italianate metal cornice on modillions. Elliptical arches span large first-floor openings. After the railway offices moved out, the building served a variety of uses as the town’s retail center moved west away from the tracks, and by the mid-1970s the station was vacant. In 1998 it was rehabilitated for the Railroad Museum, the Texas Visitor Center, and offices for the Wichita County Historical Society. A substantial collection of locomotives and passenger and freight cars reside on tracks adjacent to the station.
Across the street at 500 8th, the former J. A. Kemp Wholesale Grocery Building (1892) in rock-faced local red sandstone was the warehouse for one of Kemp’s enterprises, a wholesale grocery distribution company. The high-quality masonry work of the facade’s three large stone arches indicates the success of Kemp’s businesses.