A historic train station here is set to reopen next week after a year of renovations.

The overhaul, planned for more than a decade, included many improvements aimed at maintaining the structure of the 133-year-old station and turning it into a micro-museum of Kirkwood's rail history.

The station is set to reopen during a Tuesday morning ribbon-cutting ceremony, the city said in a news release.

The building has seen sweeping changes as part of the $4.7 million project: A new roof has been installed. The train platform has been restored to its 1940s look. And a public courtyard is being completed next door.

It'll also house display cases containing artifacts from the station's past, and murals by Washington, Missouri-based artist Bryan Haynes will adorn the interior walls of the building.

"With this project, we want to emphasize the history," Zoe Perkins, chair of the Kirkwood's arts commission, told City Council members last month. "It's an opportunity for us to tell more of the history of Kirkwood."

Less front-facing renovations have been made too: A new HVAC system was installed, the exterior and interiors were repaneled, and the building itself was stabilized.

The site of the current station has been an important stop for St. Louis-area passenger rail since Kirkwood's founding.

Train service through Kirkwood began in 1853 — the same year the city was incorporated — when the Pacific Railroad's tracks were laid through the area and the first train arrived, according to a history of the station compiled by the Kirkwood Train Station Foundation.

Rail was so vital to the city that it was named that year after the Pacific Railroad's chief engineer, James Kirkwood.

A shabby, wood-framed depot was built a decade later, meant to be a stop for passengers heading west on the rail, according to the foundation's history. The depot was eventually replaced with the current station building in 1893.

By 1900, it served passengers on as many as 14 trains a day running between downtown St. Louis and Kirkwood.

Over the next century, the station was renovated several times, including a sweeping modernization effort in 1941 and minor modifications made to the building several times after that.

Despite the changes, the station's look and structure remained largely unchanged.

"New technology has been integrated into the depot, such as LED lighting, automatic door opening devices, and flat screen televisions," the foundation's history says. "Most of the original materials remain intact from the building’s original construction in 1893 and the 1941 renovation."

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

The city purchased the station from Union Pacific in 2003 for nearly $1 million with hopes of maintaining operations, and rallied dozens of volunteers to work at the station when Amtrak cut staffing because of tight budgets. Today, the station is entirely volunteer run, serving train passengers daily and welcoming historical preservation and train enthusiasts, as well as private groups that rent the space for events.

Throughout the city's ownership, Mayor Liz Gibbons said last month, the station became the second busiest in Missouri.

Leaders are now hoping to make it a regional tourist destination too.

"This was a really wonderful opportunity and chance for Kirkwood to have something really unique and exciting," Art McDonnell, Kirkwood's former mayor and the president of the Kirkwood Train Station Foundation, said last month. "We have a train station which is going to draw people from all over to come and see it and enjoy it and to glorify what Kirkwood has done."

Planning for the renovations began in 2013, according to the city's website. For the next several years, the foundation campaigned for donations for the project.

The East-West Gateway Council of Governments, a consortium of local governments in the St. Louis area, donated $1.7 million, and in 2022 then-Gov. Mike Parson approved another $2.5 million in state and federal funding for the project.

The remaining cost has been covered by private donations, and the planned murals will be covered by the foundation's own funds.

"There are no taxpayer dollars needed," McDonnell said. "We have all the money we think we need."

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