The Overland Park Historical Society has long hoped to make the historic Strang Line Depot in downtown Overland Park its forever home, and it recently cemented that vision.
Last week, the historical society board, community members and local officials formally marked the completion of a restoration and renovation project that was years in the making with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 80th Street and Santa Fe Drive.
The space at 8001 Santa Fe Drive, dubbed Discover OP, offers a permanent home for the historical society and its museum collection and archive of Overland Park’s history in a building that’s tied to the city’s origins.
“If we don’t understand where we’ve come from, we won’t know where we’re going and how we got there,” said Tracey Osborne Oltjen, Overland Park Chamber of Commerce CEO, during the ribbon-cutting.
Strang Depot was built in 1906
The historical society first bought the Strang Line Depot property about five years ago after waiting decades for such an opportunity.
The original structure was built in 1906 and served as the depot for William Strang’s Interurban Railway, a line the connected Johnson County to Kansas City, Missouri. It was the first commercial building to be built in what is now known as the city of Overland Park.
Around 1940, the railway shuttered and previous owners of the building added onto it, but many people believed the original depot remained encased inside a nondescript, simple brick structure that eventually housed a flooring and paint store for many years.
When the previous shop owners announced their intent to close, the historical society moved to acquire the building.
At the time, Brad Moore, the executive director of the Overland Park Historical Society, said the purchase set the stage for the historical society to realize a “lifelong goal” for the group.” After they closed on the sale in fall 2019, a handful of historical society members quickly moved to prove once and for all that the old depot could still be uncovered inside.
They were right; after pulling back some of the interior wall, they found the stone facade of the 1906 depot building.
At the ribbon-cutting last Wednesday, Moore said it was Florent Wagner — a founding member of the historical society and an unofficial city historian who died earlier this year at age 87 — who believed so strongly that the old depot remained hidden in the building even when no one believed him.
“He was the catalyst, the inspiration behind all of this,” Moore said of Wagner. “He knew we would see it over the finish line.”
Restoring the Strang Depot was a top priority for the historical society
Since acquiring the 4,200-square-foot Strang Depot building in 2019, the historical society has made restoring and renovating it a top priority, with an emphasis on restoring the western facade of the original depot to its 1906 condition inside the building.
The cost of the project eventually led the group to sell the historic 1910 Stanley Bank building in southern Overland Park and later the Strang Line Car Barn also in downtown Overland Park.
They also conducted a large fundraising campaign, and the city of Overland Park contributed funds to the project.
By late 2024, most of the exterior improvements to the depot building had been completed, and the historical society expected to move into the space sometime this year.
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