Replacing the 1910 wooden Houston East and West Texas (HE&WT) Railway Depot, this brick station is more animated than the typical small town depot. A tall, flared hipped roof over the central block extends with lower hipped wings, all with deep soffits over curved metal brackets. The polygonal stationmaster’s bay on the trackside extends through the roof as a tower and spire. The HE&WT was built as a narrow-gauge system (36 inches) and converted to the standardized (56 inches) in 1894 without disrupting rail service. HE&WT became part of the Southern Pacific in 1934. This is the only surviving depot of the HE&WT system. Passenger traffic ended in 1954. Owned by the city and restored in 2006, the depot opened in 2011 to house transportation-related exhibits.
North along the tracks at 211 Old Tyler Road is the Nacogdoches Wholesale Grocery Company Building (1904, Diedrich Rulfs), a utilitarian brick facility for the Mayer and Schmidt Company, one of Rulfs’s repeat clients, and now a popular restaurant.