NILES — When Niles resident Karen Persa lived in Chicago, she said her heart broke each time beautiful, historic structures were torn down for high-rise apartment buildings.

“So, when I retired and moved up here,” she said, “this is what brought me to the Hometown Christmas event and this beautiful, historic Amtrak depot.”

Persa was referring to the Four Flags Garden Club. Behind her, inside the Niles Historic Amtrak Depot, garden club members intermingled with travelers waiting for a train to arrive. In the seats between travelers were boxes of garland, ornaments, ribbons and Christmas décor, which garden club members methodically picked up and carefully placed on windowsills, a hearth and a tree.

Group members spent a few hours of their Monday preparing for the club’s 28th annual Hometown Christmas from 5 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the station’s 598 Dey St. location off Fifth Street in Niles.

Attendees of the free event can experience the decorated interior and exterior of the depot, built in 1892, while visiting Santa and eating homemade cookies and candy. After Mayor Pro-Tem Gretchen Bertschy speaks, the depot’s Christmas lights will be turned on.

The depot’s décor will then be left until after the new year.

Longtime attendees of Hometown Christmas may recall that the event got its start thanks to the filming of “Only the Lonely,” a romantic comedy, at the depot in 1991. The station was outfitted with Christmas décor and lighting for the last scene of the film. Garden club members and Niles residents loved it so much that they hosted another Christmas lighting that winter.

Elaine Metzer, Four Flags Garden Club member, stepped off her ladder next to a Fraser fir donated by Pinecrest Christmas Tree Farm in Galien and walked over to three nearby plaques to discuss the deeper connection between her club, the depot and the beauty of Niles.

The first plaque displayed colorized pictures of gardens and a pond near the depot shortly after it was first built.

They were assembled and maintained by John Gipner, head gardener for the Michigan Central Railroad. His garden work, and his deliveries of thousands of flowers to train passengers each year from a nearby 10,000 square-foot greenhouse, earned Niles the nickname “The Garden City.”

After Gipner died in Niles in 1957, Four Flags Garden Club and Friends of the Silverbook Cemetery created a garden at his gravesite.

By the 1970s, however, the gardens and the station, now owned by Amtrak, had deteriorated.

“It was absolutely dreadful,” said Metzger as a train’s whistle signaled the departure of the half-dozen travelers around her. “I mean dropped ceilings, unattended, the outside was all sooty. There were no gardens. It was overgrown.”

An accountant, Ray Suabedissen, changed that. In 1974, he started the process of restoring the grounds with gardens. Four Flags Garden Club took over in 1975. 

Then, Amtrak received a grant from the state of Michigan to improve the depot itself, adding to the beautification.

With the creation of Hometown Christmas about 15 years later, the beauty and history of the Niles Historic Amtrak Station and its gardens can be seen in a new way, Persa said.

The station still has a remnant of Gipner’s work on the original gardens, a mulberry tree next to a sign welcoming train passengers to the city.

Persa looked at the tree from a depot window. She will leave Niles to be closer to family in Indiana next year, but like the mulberry tree is a reminder of Gipner’s work, Hometown Christmas will be a reminder of hers.