The Downtown Joplin Alliance announced Wednesday that they had received a grant to assist with a long abandoned building and a vital piece of Joplin’s history. KRPS’s Fred Fletcher-Fierro has more.

In May of this year, the Downtown Joplin Alliance held a press conference at Joplin city hall to announce that they were starting a national marketing campaign to locate a buyer for the 110-year old building.

Yesterday, the DJA announced that the organization had been awarded a $5000 grant by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

These grant funds will be used to create structural and environmental reports for the Joplin Union Depot. It will also allow the the DJA to hire a structural engineer who specializes in historic properties to assess the Union Depot to enable more targeted marketing for this significant piece of Joplin’s history.

Grants from the National Trust Preservation Fund range from $2,500 to $5,000 and have provided over $15 million in assistance since 2003. The Joplin train depot was completed in 1911. The final train left the depot on November 4, 1969. It was entered into the National Register of Historic Place in 1973.