Owner has plans for Edmond depot, a stop on Oklahoma City's interurban

It was no mystery to Rice, a lifelong Edmond resident, and it probably was no secret to a few others who noticed the old hipped roof behind the not-quite-as-old addition with its flat top and midcentury urban office look fronting First Street east of Broadway.

The back part — under the hipped roof — used to be Edmond's interurban station, circa 1920s.

What was surprising to Rice was how much of the original structure had remained hidden by the front addition for so long.

Early mass transit

Oklahoma Railway Co., a combination of turn-of-the-20th-century startups, operated the interurban electric trolley car system from a terminal in Oklahoma City. From around the teens until just after World War II and the auto boom, rail cars carried people and freight to numerous stops along 74 miles of track.

Lines extended to El Reno and from Norman to Guthrie, where the system connected with the Fort Smith & Western Railway connecting to points east. In Edmond, the light rail cars stopped at a depot at 9 E First St.

Rice bought the place, most recently a dentist's office, with what he considers a historical jewel inside, earlier this year.

“I didn't really know what I was going to do with it,” said Rice, a probate and estate planning attorney whose family has practiced law downtown since 1906. “The building itself was in pretty bad shape, so I looked at it and I decided it would just be too cost-prohibitive to restore or remodel.

“I decided, after getting into the building and tearing out some walls — I realized that there was enough of the interurban station, that that was my best bet: to save the interurban station and tear down the rest of the building.”