October, 1903-1908 Union Station construction begins. The glorious result helped set the tone for Washington’s monumental architecture for the next forty years.įebruPresident Theodore Roosevelt signs into law a measure “to provide for a Union Station in the District of Columbia.” Burnham and chief designer Peirce Anderson employed the elegant Beaux-Arts style and drew on Rome’s Baths of Diocletian and Triumph arches for the building’s inspiration. Today, the station is still traditionally host to one of these prestigious Presidential events every four years on January 20.Ĭongress approved the union terminal site on the north side of Massachusetts Avenue, with D.H. When built, the station concourse one of the largest rooms in the United States and regularly used for Inaugural Balls. Completed in 1988, the effort restored the station's grandeur and remade it into a transportation, shopping, and dining megaplex. During the 1980's the station underwent a major renovation, costing over $160 Million Dollars. During World War II as many as 200,000 passengers a day passed through the station. Besides the B&O and PRR, the station also served the Chesapeake & Ohio, Southern, Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac (RF&P), Atlantic Coast Line, and Seaboard Railroads. A magnificent gateway to our nation's capital, the station has served the needs of the traveling public continuously since that year. The station, designed by architect Daniel Burnham, opened with the arrival of a B&O Railroad passenger train from Pittsburgh on October 27, 1907. Washington, D.C.'s Union Station was built jointly by the Pennsylvania (PRR) and Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroads on an area of swampland near the U.S.