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 Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, and the busiest passenger rail line in the nation.

An intermodal facility, Union Station also serves MARC and VRE commuter rail services, the Washington Metro, intercity bus lines, and local Metrobus buses. It carries the IATA airport code of ZWU. By 2024, more than 70,000 passengers were passing through the station on an average day, and the complex handled some 37 million users a year across all modes.

At the height of its traffic, during World War II, as many as 200,000 passengers passed through the station in a single day. The building fell into disrepair by the late 1970s and was closed as unsafe in 1981; a major restoration reopened it in 1988 with a festival marketplace of shops and restaurants alongside the rail facilities. Retail and dining declined sharply after the COVID-19 pandemic, and by late 2022 more than half the commercial space was vacant. Amtrak took control of the station in 2024 through eminent domain and is pursuing a multibillion-dollar program, the "2nd Century Plan," to modernize and expand the complex over roughly two decades. On August 27, 2025, the Trump administration announced it would negotiate to resume direct federal management of the station's non-railroad areas.

History

Earlier stations

Before Union Station opened, the city's railroads operated from two separate depots. New Jersey Avenue Station (1851–1907), at New Jersey Avenue NW and C Street NW, served the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station (1872–1907), at B Street NW (now Constitution Avenue) and 6th Street NW, served the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad—a Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary—along with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and the Southern Railway. It was the site of the July 1881 assassination of President James A. Garfield. The project was guided by Daniel Burnham, a Chicago architect and member of the U.S. Senate Park Commission, who urged that the station be "monumental in character" as the "vestibule of the city of Washington."

Congress passed an act authorizing the station—the only U.S. railroad station specifically authorized by Congress—which President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law on February 28, 1903. The Washington Terminal Company, jointly owned by the two railroads, oversaw construction. Total spending on the station and its associated grades, approaches, bridges, tunnels, and yards exceeded $16 million, with the main building alone costing about $5.9 million. The building was primarily designed by William Pierce Anderson of D.H. Burnham & Company.

The project drew local opposition, as it displaced residents and severed neighborhoods east of the tracks. The Northeast Washington Citizens' Association protested the loss of access roads, businesses, and a streetcar line, and the planned closure of H Street. After negotiations, H Street was kept open by routing it through a tunnel under the tracks. More than 100 houses were demolished, erasing the impoverished neighborhood known as "Swampoodle," and the flood-prone Tiber Creek was placed in a tunnel.

The first B&O passenger train arrived on October 27, 1907, and the first PRR train followed on November 17; the main building was completed in 1908. Of the original station tracks, most entered from the northeast and terminated at the headhouse, while the remainder continued south through a twin-tube tunnel beneath Capitol Hill, allowing through traffic between the networks north and south of the city. It was converted to a U.S.O. canteen in December 1941 that served some 6.5 million service members during World War II, and it later reopened as a U.S.O. lounge dedicated by President Harry Truman.

On January 15, 1953, the Pennsylvania Railroad's Federal, arriving from Boston with failed brakes, crashed into the station: GG1 locomotive No. 4876 struck the bumper block, crossed the platform, and broke through into the concourse before the floor gave way and dropped it into the basement. No one was killed, the locomotive was repaired and returned to service, and the hole was temporarily planked over ahead of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's imminent inauguration. The accident later inspired the finale of the 1976 film Silver Streak.

Until Amtrak assumed intercity passenger service on May 1, 1971, the station was a hub for the Baltimore and Ohio, Chesapeake and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Southern railways, with the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac linking it to north–south lines serving the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.

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File:Washington, D.C., switch yards, Union Station.jpg|Trains at the station shortly after its completion,

File:Train concourse, new Pennsylvania Station 4a23931v.jpg|Train concourse,

File:USO Lounge Union Station Washington D.C. ppc.jpg|U.S.O. Lounge (former Presidential Suite),

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Decline, restoration, and the festival marketplace

thumb|The "Pit"

For the 1976 Bicentennial, the station was reconfigured as a National Visitor Center, its Main Hall fitted with a recessed pit for a slide-show presentation sarcastically nicknamed "the Pit." A lack of publicity and convenient parking left the center unpopular; the Park Service ended the slide show and laid off most of the staff in 1978. A makeshift replacement Amtrak station built behind the concourse was widely derided, with passengers walking some 1,900 feet from the front door to the tracks. After a leaking roof caused part of the ceiling to collapse, the Park Service declared the building unsafe and closed it to the public on February 23, 1981.

The closure prompted Congress to act. The Union Station Redevelopment Act, signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 29, 1981, transferred control of the station to the Department of Transportation, funded roof and structural repairs, authorized its conversion into a retail complex, and required Amtrak to move its operations back inside the historic building. In 1988, Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole directed $70 million to the restoration; "the Pit" was rebuilt as a basement level and the Main Hall floor refitted with marble.

The restored station reopened on September 29, 1988, with a festival marketplace of more than 130 shops and restaurants developed by former Rouse Company executives and designed by Benjamin C. Thompson, who had earlier designed Baltimore's Harborplace and Faneuil Hall Marketplace. A new Amtrak passenger concourse was built behind the original Concourse—trains no longer enter the historic hall—and was renamed in 1994 to honor W. Graham Claytor Jr., Amtrak's president from 1982 to 1993. A movie theater in the former "Pit" later closed in 2009 and was replaced by an expanded food court, which still preserves the arched bays and track numbers under which trains once parked.

21st century

thumb|Washington Union Station with the [[United States Capitol in the background in May 2022]]

Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation acquired the mall's long-term leasehold in January 2007 for $160 million. Retail then declined steadily: the cinema closed in 2009, Barnes & Noble in 2013, and its replacement H&M in 2019, while Amtrak moved its headquarters offices out of the station in 2017. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened the slide. By 2022 the Washington Post reported that the station, which had once held as many as 100 stores, was down to about 40 retailers and eateries with more than half its commercial space vacant. On April 17, 2024, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Amtrak could seize the station's commercial space through eminent domain, and Amtrak took control in late July 2024. Amtrak agreed in February 2025 to pay $505 million for the leasehold, though the former operator sued to block the deal; in March 2025 a federal judge dismissed the company's remaining claims, ruling it had no right to the settlement proceeds after letting the facility deteriorate.

In August 2024, free transfers between MARC and VRE were introduced at Union Station to ease cross-state regional travel. On August 27, 2025, the Trump administration announced it would negotiate to resume direct federal management of the station's non-railroad areas; the mall is owned by the Federal Railroad Administration under the U.S. Department of Transportation, with the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation (USRC) managing the retail, office, and event spaces. In March 2026, the National Capital Planning Commission approved a plan to add energy-efficient exterior lighting to improve safety and illuminate the building's architecture at night, with completion expected by early 2027.

Architecture

thumb|The central interior of Union Station in August 2017

Architect Daniel H. Burnham, assisted by Pierce Anderson, drew on several architectural styles. Classical models included the Arch of Constantine, echoed in the exterior and main façade, and the vaulted spaces of the Baths of Diocletian, echoed in the interior. The station was sited prominently at the intersection of two of Pierre L'Enfant's avenues and oriented toward the United States Capitol five blocks away. Built on a massive scale—the façade stretches more than and the waiting-room ceiling rises above the floor—it combined Beaux-Arts inscriptions and allegorical sculpture with expensive materials such as marble, gold leaf, and white granite.

Above the main cornice stand six colossal statues—modeled on the Dacian prisoners of the Arch of Constantine—designed by Louis St. Gaudens. Titled "The Progress of Railroading," they personify Fire (Prometheus), Electricity (Thales), Freedom (Themis), Imagination (Apollo), Agriculture (Ceres), and Mechanics (Archimedes); the substitution of Agriculture for Commerce reflected the influence of an American agricultural lobbying bloc. St. Gaudens also created 46 centurion statues for the Main Hall, one for each state in the Union at the time the station opened. Each statue's shield was added shortly after installation, following complaints about the figures' nudity from the hips down.

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File:One of six allegorical statues by sculptor Louis St. Gaudens on the façade of Union Station, Washington, D.C LCCN2011634754.tif|Prometheus (Fire)

File:One of six allegorical statues by sculptor Louis St. Gaudens that stand above the front façade of Union Station, Washington, D.C LCCN2011634255.tif|Thales (Electricity)

File:Saint Gaudens' "Agriculture," at Union Station, Washington, D.C LCCN2011631002.tif|Themis (Freedom)

File:Union Station statue, Ceres, Washington, D.C LCCN2010630343.tif|Ceres (Agriculture)

File:Louis St. Gaudens's allegorical Archimedes statue, representing the gift of mechanics, one of six on the parapet above the entrance to Washington D.C.'s Union Station LCCN2011634506.tif|Archimedes (Mechanics)

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Burnham drew on a tradition, launched by London's Euston Station in 1837, of treating a terminal's entrance as a triumphal arch. He linked the end pavilions with long arcades of vaulted loggias built with lightweight, fireproof Guastavino tiles. The setting of the façade at the focus of converging avenues in a park-like green is among the few realized works of the City Beautiful movement, recalling the Court of Honor at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which Burnham had coordinated. The station originally housed a full range of services, including dining rooms, barber shops, and a mortuary.

Services

thumb|The food court at Union Station in February 2006

Trains

Union Station is served by Amtrak's high-speed Acela Express, the Northeast Regional, and several long-distance trains—including the Floridian, Crescent, and Silver Meteor—with service to destinations such as Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans, and Miami. The station is the terminus of the MARC commuter system serving Maryland and West Virginia and the Virginia Railway Express serving Northern Virginia.

The tracks are split between two levels. The ground level holds tracks 7–20, served by high-level bay platforms and used by all MARC trains, all Acela Express trains, and Northeast Regional trains that terminate at the station; these tracks dead-end and serve only trains to and from the north. The lower level holds tracks 22–29, served by low-level platforms and used by all VRE trains, all Amtrak long-distance trains, and Northeast Regional trains continuing south; these run through the First Street Tunnel beneath Capitol Hill. Because electrification ends at the station, southbound trains continuing into Virginia swap their electric locomotives for diesel-electric ones.

Transit

thumb|Union Station platform in August 2023, serving the [[Washington Metro Red Line]]

A Washington Metro station on the Red Line lies underground beneath the western side of the building, with entrances inside Union Station and at Massachusetts Avenue NE and First Street NE.

The DC Streetcar's H Street/Benning Road Line served the station from a stop on the H Street ("Hopscotch") Bridge directly north of the station, accessible through the parking garage.

Intercity buses

thumb|Greyhound ticket counter at the Union Station bus terminal

Intercity buses operate from a facility in the station's parking garage, which opened to carriers in late 2011 and consolidated Greyhound Lines, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and others by 2012. OurBus began service in 2017, and after Megabus ended U.S. operations in 2024 following its parent company's bankruptcy, Peter Pan took over its northeastern routes from the station.

Maintenance

The Ivy City Yard just north of the station houses a large Amtrak maintenance facility, including the maintenance base for the Acela high-speed trainsets, and Metro's Brentwood facility occupies its southwest corner.

2nd Century Plan and expansion

thumb|The Amtrak boarding area in November 2016, behind the original 1988 concourse structure

Although the station serves about 37 million users a year across all modes, its 1907-era rail facilities operate beyond capacity at peak times.

The effort grew out of a master plan that Amtrak unveiled in July 2012, prepared with the architecture firm HOK and Parsons Brinckerhoff, which proposed reconstructing and expanding the station over 15 to 20 years at an estimated cost of $6.5 to $7.5 billion in 2012 dollars. In April 2015, Beyer Blinder Belle and Grimshaw were engaged to develop the master plan, and the design team unveiled updated expansion designs in July 2022.

Concourse Modernization Project

The first component to be built is the Concourse Modernization Project, which is intended to roughly double the capacity of the passenger concourse with expanded seating, improved boarding, upgraded restrooms, more natural light, and better connections between transit modes. Funded through Amtrak capital and a Federal Railroad Administration safety grant, the work is targeted for completion in 2026 and is designed to complement Amtrak's incoming NextGen Acela fleet.

Washington Union Station Expansion Project

The far larger Washington Union Station Expansion Project is a complete reconstruction of the station's railyard, platforms, and concourses, sponsored by the USRC in coordination with Amtrak, with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) as the lead federal agency. Its components include reconfigured station tracks, new -wide platforms, a new train hall, new below-track concourses, new First and Second Street entrances, a new bus facility, and a replacement parking garage. The project is designed to raise the station's annual capacity from about 17.7 million to roughly 42.4 million passengers, with planned increases of about 95% for Amtrak, 150% for MARC, 250% for VRE, and 50% for intercity buses.

After a draft environmental review, the FRA released a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement in May 2023 introducing a new preferred design (Alternative F), and on March 12, 2024, it signed a combined Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision.

Burnham Place

The plan also accommodates Burnham Place, a separate, privately financed development proposed by Akridge on the air rights it owns over the rail yard. The roughly three-million-square-foot mixed-use project is intended to deck over the tracks and reconnect the station to the adjacent NoMa, Capitol Hill, and H Street Corridor neighborhoods. Because it does not involve federal funding, Burnham Place is treated as independent of the federal Expansion Project. An 84-year leasehold was formerly held by Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation, which no longer owns or manages the building; the non-profit Union Station Redevelopment Corporation now manages the retail, office, and event spaces.

Washington Union Station has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Strangers on a Train (1951), Hannibal (2001), Collateral Damage (2002), and Head of State (2003).

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File:The Proposed New Union Railway Depot, March 1902.png|A 1902 drawing of a proposed design for Union Station

File:Union Station Washington, D.C. 1906.tif|Union Station in 1906 before its opening

File:Grand Lobby, Union Station, Washington, D.C (NYPL b12647398-69895).tiff|Interior waiting room,

File:Great Hall, Washington Union Station (2024)-L1005585.jpg|Great Hall in June 2024

File:Interior of Union Station DC.jpg|Ceiling of the great hall in May 2023

File:Amtrak trains at Washington Union Station, 1994.jpg|Trains on the platform in January 1994

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See also

  • Freedom Bell, American Legion, an artwork installed in front of Union Station
  • List of busiest railway stations in North America
  • Norwegian Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C.

References

Further reading

  • Union Station Redevelopment Corporation
  • Union Station, a brief history – National Railway Historical Society