Washington Union Station


Washington Union Station, known locally as Union Station, is a major train station, transportation hub, and leisure destination in Washington, D.C. Designed by Daniel Burnham and opened in 1907, it is Amtrak's second-busiest station and North America's 13th-busiest railroad station. The station is the southern terminus of the Northeast Corridor, an electrified rail line extending north through major cities including Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, and the busiest passenger rail line in the nation. In 2015, it served just under five million passengers.
An intermodal facility, Union Station also serves MARC and VRE commuter rail services, the Washington Metro, the DC Streetcar, intercity bus lines, and local Metrobus buses. It carries the IATA airport code of ZWU.
At the height of its traffic, during World War II, as many as 200,000 passengers passed through the station in a single day. In 1988, a headhouse wing was added and the original station renovated for use as a shopping mall. As of 2014, Union Station was one of the busiest rail facilities and shopping destinations in the United States, visited by over 40 million people a year. The COVID-19 pandemic and other factors caused a sharp decline in retail and dining; by late 2022, more than half its commercial space was vacant. Amtrak took control of the station in 2024 and is working on a major renovation and expansion. On August 27, 2025, the Trump administration announced it would negotiate to resume direct federal management of non-railroad areas.

History

Pre-Union Station terminals

Before Union Station opened, each of the major railroads operated out of one of two stations:
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line ran east on D Street NE across North Capitol Street, then north on Delaware Avenue NE. It divided into two lines. The Metropolitan branch continued north on 1st Street NE, turning east on New York Ave NE and continuing north through Eckington. The other line turned east onto I Street NE up to 7th Street NE where it headed back north on what is today West Virginia Avenue running next to the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.

20th century

Construction

When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad announced in 1901 that they had agreed to build a new union station together, the city had two reasons to celebrate. The decision meant that both railroads would soon remove their trackwork and terminals from the National Mall. Though changes there appeared only gradually, the consolidation of the depots allowed the creation of the Mall as it appears today. Secondly, the plan to bring all the city's railroads under one roof promised that Washington would finally have a station both large enough to handle large crowds and impressive enough to befit the city's role as the federal capital. The station was to be designed under the guidance of Daniel Burnham, a famed Chicago architect and member of the U.S. Senate Park Commission, who in September 1901 wrote to the Commission's chairman, Sen. James McMillan, of the proposed project: "The station and its surroundings should be treated in a monumental manner, as they will become the vestibule of the city of Washington, and as they will be in close proximity to the Capitol itself."
After two years of complicated and sometimes contentious negotiations, Congress passed S. 4825 entitled "An Act to provide a union railroad station in the District of Columbia" which was signed into law by 26th President Theodore Roosevelt on February 28, 1903. The Act authorized the Washington Terminal Company to construct a station "monumental in character" that would cost at least $4 million. Including additional outlays for new terminal grades, approaches, bridges, viaducts, coach and freight yards, tunnels, shops, support buildings and other infrastructure, the total cost to the Terminal Company for all the improvements associated with Union Station exceeded $16 million. This cost was financed by $12 million in first mortgage bonds as well as advances by the owners which were repaid by stock and cash.
Each carrier also received $1.5 million in government funding to compensate them for the costs of eliminating grade crossings in the city. The only railroad station in the nation specifically authorized by the U.S. Congress, the building was primarily designed by William Pierce Anderson of the Chicago architectural firm of D.H. Burnham & Company.

Effect on the neighborhood

Though the project was supported by the federal government, there was opposition at the local level. The new depot would displace residents and cleave new neighborhoods east of the tracks.
On January 10, 1902, representatives of the railroads presented preliminary plans for the construction of the Union Depot to representatives of the District of Columbia. They proposed to build tunnels under the tracks for K, L, and M Streets NE and to close H Street. The street would be closed on both sides of Delaware Avenue. If a tunnel was to be built for H Street NE, the cost would be an extra $10,000.
Three days later, officers and members of the Northeast Washington Citizens' Association expressed their outrage to representatives of Congress and the railroads at an Association meeting at the Northeast Temple on H Street NE. The president of the Association claimed that the Pennsylvania Railroad controlled Congress; a member of the Association threatened to take the matter to court. The Association declared unacceptable the loss of a major access road to downtown for the residents of Northeast; the loss of millions of dollars of business properties and of the business it represented; the closure of a vital streetcar line used by commuters, considering the alternative cost of building an access across the tracks.
At the association's March 10, 1902, meeting, its president told the audience that the District Commissioners had heard their complaints, and that H Street would remain open with a tunnel running under the tracks.
More than 100 houses were demolished to make way for the station and its tracks. The demolition erased the heart of an impoverished neighborhood called "Swampoodle" where crime was rampant. It was the end of a community but the beginning of a new era for Washington, D.C. Tiber Creek, which was prone to flooding, was put in a tunnel. Delaware Avenue disappeared from the map between Massachusetts Avenue and Florida Avenue under the tracks. Only a small section remains, next to the tracks between L and M Streets NE.

Opening and operation

The first B&O train to arrive with passengers was the Pittsburgh Express, at 6:50 a.m. on October 27, 1907; the first PRR train arrived three weeks later on November 17. The main building itself was completed in 1908. Of its 32 station tracks, 20 enter from the northeast and terminate at the station's headhouse. The remaining 12 tracks enter below ground level from the south via a 4,033-foot twin-tube tunnel passing under Capitol Hill and an 898-foot long subway under Massachusetts Avenue, which allow through traffic direct access to the rail networks both north and south of the city.
Among the new station's unique features was an opulent "Presidential Suite" where the U.S. President, State Department and Congressional leaders could receive distinguished visitors arriving in Washington. Provided with a separate entrance, the suite was also meant to safeguard the Chief Executive during his travels in an effort to prevent a repeat of the July, 1881 assassination of 20th President James A. Garfield in the old former Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. The suite was converted in December 1941, during World War II, to a U.S.O. canteen, which went on to serve 6.5 million military service members during World War II. Although closed on May 31, 1946, it was reopened in 1951 as a U.S.O. lounge and dedicated by President Harry Truman as a permanent "home away from home" for traveling U.S. Armed Services members.
On the morning of January 15, 1953, the Pennsylvania Railroad's Federal, the overnight train from Boston, crashed into the station. When the engineer tried to apply the trainline brakes two miles out of the platforms, he discovered that he only had engine brakes. A switchman on the approach to the station noticed the runaway train and telephoned a warning to the station, as the train coasted downhill into track 16. The GG1 electric locomotive, No. 4876, hit the bumper block at about, jumped onto the platform, destroyed the stationmaster's office at the end of the track, took out a newsstand, and was on its way to crashing through the wall into the Great Hall. Just then, the floor of the terminal, having never been designed to carry the 475,000-pound weight of this locomotive, gave way, dropping the engine into the basement. The electric locomotive fell into about the center of what is now the food court. Remarkably, no one was killed, and passengers in the rear cars thought that they had only had a rough stop. An investigation revealed that an anglecock on the brakeline had been closed, probably by an icicle knocked from an overhead bridge. The accident inspired the finale of the 1976 film Silver Streak. The durable design of the GG1 made its damage repairable, and it was soon back in service after being hauled away in pieces to the PRR's main shops in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Before the latter action was undertaken, the GG1 and the hole it made were temporarily planked over and hidden from view due to the imminent inauguration of General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the thirty-fourth President of the United States.
Until intercity passenger rail service was taken over by Amtrak on May 1, 1971, Union Station served as a hub for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, Pennsylvania Railroad, and Southern Railway. The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac provided a link to Richmond, Virginia, about to the south, where major north–south lines of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and Seaboard Air Line Railroad provided service to the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. World War II was the busiest period in the station's history in terms of passenger traffic, with up to 200,000 people passing through on a single day.