8 of essentially the most stunning practice stations within the U.S.

Train stations within the U.S. are extra than simply locations for passengers to trip the rails—many are historic design marvels—and nonetheless are, guests’ first introduction to main cities like LA, Chicago, and New York City. Communities saved a number of of those century-old stunners, which had declined after World War II. Now, many practice stations now double as accommodations, museums, and meals halls along with serving as transportation hubs. These practice stations additionally stay icons of structure, and they’re beginning to see extra passengers stroll by their doorways, too, as Amtrak had a record 32.8 million riders in 2024.

The old-school opulence of those practice stations, which drip with marble, mosaics, sculptures, and symbolism, nonetheless persuades vacationers to pause for a uncommon style of architectural eye sweet—not one thing you’d normally say about an airport. 

Here’s an inventory of the place you can find essentially the most stunning practice stations within the U.S.

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You can’t assist however cease in your tracks in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, a Beaux Arts behemoth accomplished in 1908 that’s a fittingly grand gateway to the nation’s capital. Its hovering Main Hall has a 30-foot-high coffered barrel-vaulted ceiling punctuated with 23-karat gold-leaf medallions, and 46 statues of ancient Roman Legionnaire soldiers stand sentinel across the room above the passengers wandering beneath. Despite all these symbols of its previous, the station is present process a huge $8.8 billion modernization upgrade to remodel the nation’s second-busiest practice station right into a hub for high-speed rail. A new train hall is at present beneath building subsequent to the historic one, designed to raised join with buses and different types of public transit. 

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Denver’s practice station is a phoenix, rising from the ashes—each actually and figuratively—a number of occasions over the past century. The chandelier in the women’s bathroom caught fireplace in 1894, torching a lot of the unique constructing, however in 1914, the practice station expanded to accommodate an rising variety of passengers. An spectacular 2014 overhaul introduced the previously dilapidated station again to life, and 10 years later, a refresh confirmed Union Station’s place as an integral a part of the town’s cloth. The carved granite Beaux Arts magnificence nonetheless has many unique options, together with its terrazzo flooring, iron arches, and double-height arched home windows.

Today, Denver’s Union Station is a mannequin for different practice stations throughout the nation, offering requirements for modern-day vacationers. Its food hall accommodates bars serving cocktails and Colorado craft beers, in addition to eating places, together with Iberian-themed Ultreia, helmed by James Beard-award-winning chef Jennifer Jasinski. The Great Hall doubles as a foyer for ready passengers and company to test into the luxurious Crawford Hotel, one in all solely three accommodations in Denver awarded a Michelin Key.

“You can’t build history,” says Ed Blair, the realm basic supervisor of Denver Union Station. “There are a lot of great new modern spaces, but the uniqueness of Denver Union Station and other train stations throughout the country is that it just happens over time. Keeping those stories alive, whether they be spoken through the architecture that’s restored and celebrated, or whether things are found and turned into art, is part of what’s differentiated us, certainly in the city and then among our peers throughout the country.”

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“When you walk in and see the towering 95-foot ceilings, it’s kind of like our Sistine Chapel,” says George Guastello, the CEO of Kansas City’s Union Station. The structure of this practice station actually does encourage emotions of reverence and awe. Opened in 1914, Union Station options heavy bronze doorways and a coffered ceiling holding aloft three 3,500-pound chandeliers and a clock with a six-foot-tall face. 

Union Station in Kansas City skilled a interval of decline after World War II; nevertheless, a historic bi-state sales taxthat began in 1997 saved it and helped fund its much-needed renovations. The house has expanded to deal with rather more than trains. It can also be house to a kid-focused science museum, a planetarium, eating places, and a movie show with a five-story-tall display. The station is, after all, nonetheless for vacationers, but it surely’s turn into extra just like the entrance porch of Kansas City. 

“We’ve become the visual voice of the community,” Guastello says. “I don’t think [architect] Jarvis Hunt could have ever imagined 350,000 people in front of Union Station to do a football draft, but his building was lit up and was the backdrop for one of the biggest sporting events in the world.”

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Marking its centennial this yr, Chicago’s Union Station is the central hub for long-distance practice journey within the U.S. As the longtime house of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the world’s first skyscraper, Chicago is a superb vacation spot for structure fanatics. Even in a metropolis of giants, Union Station isn’t any slouch, and its humbly named Great Hall hints on the grandeur inside.

“It wasn’t just for travel that locals came to Chicago Union Station. It was a destination in its own right,” say Joan Johns, who leads Union Station excursions on the Chicago Architecture Center. “Locals continue to come by Chicago Union Station at all seasons of the year just to visit the Great Hall.” 

After a $22 million renovation that wrapped up in 2019, the Great Hall is as soon as once more wanting its finest, boasting travertine columns, hexagonal medallions, and gilded statues referred to as Night and Day—meant to remind clients that trains ran across the clock within the Twenties, in contrast to air journey on the time. The curved skylight that spans the total size and width of the Great Hall’s ceiling is the spotlight at this station. 

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The last grand train station constructed in America, Los Angeles Union Station, is the biggest practice terminal within the western U.S., and was touted as a beacon of modernity when it opened in 1939. Its distinctive Mission Moderne structure—combining Spanish Colonial Revival with Art Deco—is embodied within the exterior whitewashed partitions, a 127-foot-high clock tower, and a shiny crimson clay tile roof. Inside, the Waiting Hall is an Art Deco masterpiece, that includes a painted beamed ceiling, 30-foot-tall home windows, and 6 3,000-pound bronze chandeliers above blocky, unique wood chairs. An eight-year-long restoration reveals a ceiling with stencils of California wildflowers within the Entry Vestibule, which had been hidden for 80 years beneath tobacco tar and dirt. 

Like many LA residents, Union Station is also a star of the silver screen, having appeared in 150 films in its lengthy profession, together with The Dark Knight Rises, Catch Me If You Can, and Blade Runner.

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Travelers are positive to spend so much of time craning their necks at Philly’s big practice station, the place Art Deco meets neoclassical in a very grand style. “It was built at the scale of the great city, with gigantic east- and west-facing Corinthian porticoes appropriate for their function as the gateway of a metropolis,” says David Brownlee, a professor of the historical past of artwork on the University of Pennsylvania and an skilled on the City Beautiful movement, a turn-of-the-century push to deliver magnificence and monumental structure to city areas. “The stupendous Main Hall, floored in marble and walled in travertine, is 95 feet tall. It signals to the arriving traveler, in no uncertain terms, that Philadelphia is a place of superlatives.”

Coffered ceilings function blocky, cylindrical Art Deco chandeliers, and big home windows that span a number of tales, illuminating the house. The station is present process a renovation project, anticipated to complete in 2027, which can brighten its Alabama limestone facades and introduce a brand new meals corridor for vacationers, making the station a extra enticing vacation spot.

No U.S. practice station is extra iconic or higher identified than Grand Central in New York City. Even although this station doesn’t have Amtrak companies—it’s a cease just for some NYC subway traces and regional commuter trains—it sees greater than 750,000 passengers daily. Another Beaux-Arts magnificence, Grand Central attracts its architectural inspiration from ancient Roman baths, and includes a vaulted plaster ceiling painted with the 12 constellations of the zodiac and a pair of,500 stars in gold leaf. Dating from 1913, the bulging glass clock atop the data sales space stays a well-liked assembly level. An acorn sits atop the data sales space clock within the Main Concourse. Look carefully to seek out extra scattered across the station’s structure, representing the phrase “great oaks from little acorns grow,” the family motto of the Vanderbilts, who paid for the station’s building.

Topped with a 150-foot Romanesque Revival clock tower and an illuminated neon signal that implores vacationers to “Go By Train,” Portland’s Union Station opened in 1896 and has been a landmark ever since. It doesn’t resemble the opposite grand stations from this period, swapping Beaux Arts for brick, however it’s the oldest major train station on the West Coast. Today, passengers nonetheless await departures on giant wood pews beneath the lofty coffered ceilings, that are adorned with flower-shaped medallions and surrounded by Italian marble partitions and flooring in the principle corridor.

Why are so many practice stations within the U.S. referred to as Union Station?

In the times when a number of corporations supplied passenger rail service within the United States, they usually pooled their assets to create a single practice station in a metropolis. As a option to symbolize this company collaboration, practice stations had been referred to as Union Station. Today, Amtrak, based in 1971, is the one nationwide passenger rail service within the U.S.

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