Daniel Burnham modeled Union Station on the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, and it opened in 1907 as the largest train station in the world. Today it is the busiest train station in the United States.
The station was designed by Daniel Burnham in the Beaux-Arts style, modeled on the Baths of Diocletian in Rome. The main hall stretches three hundred forty-one feet long with a barrel-vaulted ceiling ninety-six feet high. When it was new, passengers walked through at night and looked up to see gold leaf gleaming from the coffered ceiling above them.
Before Union Station was built, Washington had two separate, competing rail stations, and passengers often had to transfer between them in the open air. President Theodore Roosevelt pushed for a single grand union station as part of a broader plan to beautify Washington and clear railroad tracks off the National Mall.
The station fell into catastrophic disrepair in the 1970s. Its roof leaked so badly that the floor was covered in six feet of sand to absorb the water. Pigeons roosted in the great hall. At one point there were plans to demolish it entirely. A massive public-private restoration project completed in 1988 brought it back.
Forty million passengers pass through Union Station every year, connecting the Northeast Corridor cities from Boston to Washington. Presidents have arrived and departed here. Winston Churchill, arriving for wartime consultations, stepped onto this platform in 1941.
Step inside and look up at that ceiling. The station was built for an era when train travel was the height of American ambition.