Terminal Station | |||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Inter-city rail | |||||||||||||||||||||
General information | |||||||||||||||||||||
Location | 1400 Market St., Chattanooga, Tennessee | ||||||||||||||||||||
Line(s) | CS, CNO&TP, SOU, AGS | ||||||||||||||||||||
History | |||||||||||||||||||||
Opened | 1909 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Closed | 1970 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Rebuilt | 1973, 1989 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Former services | |||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
Terminal Station | |||||||||||||||||||||
Location | 1400 Market St., Chattanooga, Tennessee | ||||||||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 35°2′13″N85°18′25″W / 35.03694°N 85.30694°W | ||||||||||||||||||||
Built | 1908 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Architect | Donn Barber | ||||||||||||||||||||
Architectural style | Beaux-Arts | ||||||||||||||||||||
NRHP reference No. | 73001778 [1] | ||||||||||||||||||||
Added to NRHP | February 20, 1973 |
The Chattanooga Choo-Choo (formerly known as Terminal Station) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a former railroad station once owned and operated by the Southern Railway. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the station operated as a hotel from 1973 to 2023, and was a member of Historic Hotels of America, part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The two-floor hotel building, once called The MacArthur building, was renovated and renamed in 2023 to The Hotel Chalet by Trestle Studio, a Chicago-based development group. [2]
The first Chattanooga Union Station was built in 1858 and demolished in the early 1900s.
An initial plan for a smaller facility to handle supplies and small packages was rejected in favor of a grand station to handle passengers as well. Construction on this Terminal Station began in 1906; it was opened in 1909 at the total cost of $1.5 million. [3]
The Terminal Station was the first train station in the South to help open a pathway to connect the north from the south, connecting the city of Cincinnati to Chattanooga. Eventually, the Terminal Station was serving some fifty passenger trains per day plus some freight and package service.
It has greeted United States presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. [4]
Chattanooga was no exception to the general decline in American railroad passenger traffic after World War II. In 1949, the Southern canceled its Florida Sunbeam, an express train that connected Chattanooga to Detroit, Cincinnati, and Jacksonville, Florida.[ citation needed ]
Traffic continued to decline amid competition from automobiles and airplanes in the 1950s and 1960s. One by one, the Southern cancelled its trains, which included the Pelican, connecting New York and New Orleans; Ponce de Leon, Cincinnati-Jacksonville; Royal Palm, Cincinnati-Miami; and Tennessean, Memphis-Washington, D.C. [5] As passenger traffic declined, the railroad began using the station's platforms for storage. [6]
In 1970, Southern cancelled its last passenger train to Chattanooga—the Birmingham Special , from New York City to Birmingham—and closed Terminal Station. Plans were laid for its demolition.
Instead, a group of business people seeking to trade on the "Chattanooga Choo Choo" song and its enduring popularity decided to reopen the station as a hotel. They poured more than $4 million into a renovation and reopened it in April 1973 as the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hilton and Entertainment Complex. [7]
In 1989, another group of business people invested another $4 million to refurbish and renovate the hotel and to bring in and hire new management and staff. They renamed it The Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel. [4]
The 24-acre (97,000 m2) complex was a convention center, hotel and resort with restaurants, shops and a model railroad setup that was operated by the Chattanooga Area Model Railroad Club (now disbanded) on the second floor of the property. [8] Hotel guests could stay in restored passenger railway cars. [9] In 2017, the two rear buildings of the hotel were renovated, turned into small apartments, and renamed Passenger Flats.
The train tracks have mostly been removed to accommodate the growth of the city. The modern Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel is adorned with a bright neon miniature sign version of the trains that once visited. The hotel is surrounded and fenced in by rose gardens and includes an additional area for educational historic trolley rides as well as an outdoor ice skating rink during the cold winter months. There are several restaurants, a comedy club and the Gate 11 micro-distillery at Terminal Station, including a restaurant co-owned by actor Norman Reedus. A symbol of the terminals previous life is ex Smoky Mountain Railroad exx Genessee and Wyoming 2-6-0 #206. It has been backdated and renumbered to Cinncinati Southern #29. It was moved to the site in 1972 from the Rebel Railroad in Tennessee and has been on display ever since. It also once featured the "Dinner in the Diner" dining car restaurant, which is no longer operating. Some parts of the complex were connected by a heritage streetcar line, operated by a 1924-built ex-New Orleans Perley Thomas trolley car originally numbered #959; this has been discontinued.
In 2022, the complex's owners launched a second renovation, which started with the demolition of one of the passenger cars and the removal of others. Officials said that eight of the train cars will be moved next to the hotel, nine will be moved among the Gardens, and six will be donated to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. The renovation was slated for completion in mid-2023, when the hotel is to reopen with "127 rooms, including 25 Pullman train car rooms". [10] [11]
The Beaux-Arts-style station designed by Donn Barber remains one of the grandest buildings in Chattanooga, with an arched main entrance leading to a center section with an 82-foot (25 m) ceiling dome with a skylight.
The station included a main waiting room, bathrooms, ticket offices, and other services for passengers. The original Terminal Station was merely one story in height, so the aforementioned dome and skylight made this area look gargantuan in juxtaposition to other similar buildings, while the arched main entrance was said to be the "largest arch in the world." [12] Lighting was provided by large brass chandeliers. [3] Terminal Station had 14 train tracks serving seven passenger platforms. [13] The then-president of the Southern Railway System, William Finley, wanted the architecture to recall the National Park Bank of New York.
The 1941 Glenn Miller song "Chattanooga Choo Choo" told the story of a train trip from Track 29 at Pennsylvania Station in New York City through Baltimore, North and South Carolina, and finishing the trip at Terminal Station. [14] (No such train actually operated.)
"Chattanooga Choo Choo" is a 1941 song that was written by Mack Gordon and composed by Harry Warren. It was originally recorded as a big band/swing tune by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra and featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade. It was the first song to receive a gold record, presented by RCA Victor in 1942, for sales of 1.2 million copies.
Tower City Center is a large mixed-use facility in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, on its Public Square. The facility is composed of a number of interconnected office buildings, including Terminal Tower, the Skylight Park mixed-use shopping center, Jack Cleveland Casino, Hotel Cleveland, Chase Financial Plaza, and Tower City station, the main hub of Cleveland's four RTA Rapid Transit lines.
Seoul Station (Korean: 서울역) is a major railway station in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The station is served by the Korail Intercity Lines and the commuter trains of the Seoul Metropolitan Subway.
Chicago Union Station is an intercity and commuter rail terminal located in the West Loop neighborhood of the Near West Side of Chicago. Amtrak's flagship station in the Midwest, Union Station is the terminus of eight national long-distance routes and eight regional corridor routes. Six Metra commuter lines also terminate here.
Denver Union Station is the main railway station and central transportation hub in Denver, Colorado. It is located at 17th and Wynkoop Streets in the present-day LoDo district and includes the historic station house, a modern open-air train shed, a 22-gate underground bus station, and light rail station. A station was first opened on the site on June 1, 1881, but burned down in 1894. The current structure was erected in two stages, with an enlarged central portion completed in 1914.
The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum is a railroad museum and heritage railroad in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway is a railroad that owns the Cincinnati Southern Railway from Cincinnati, Ohio, south to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and leases it to the Norfolk Southern Railway system.
The Central of Georgia Railway started as the Central Rail Road and Canal Company in 1833. As a way to better attract investment capital, the railroad changed its name to Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia. This railroad was constructed to join the Macon and Western Railroad at Macon, Georgia, in the United States, and run to Savannah. This created a rail link from Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River, to seaports on the Atlantic Ocean. It took from 1837 to 1843 to build the railroad from Savannah to the eastern bank of the Ocmulgee River at Macon; a bridge into the city was not built until 1851.
Cincinnati Union Terminal is an intercity train station and museum center in the Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Commonly abbreviated as CUT, or by its Amtrak station code, CIN, the terminal is served by Amtrak's Cardinal line, passing through Cincinnati three times weekly. The building's largest tenant is the Cincinnati Museum Center, comprising the Cincinnati History Museum, the Museum of Natural History & Science, Duke Energy Children's Museum, the Cincinnati History Library and Archives, and an Omnimax theater.
St. Louis Union Station is a National Historic Landmark and former train station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. At its 1894 opening, the station was the largest in the world. Traffic peaked at 100,000 people a day in the 1940s. The last Amtrak passenger train left the station in 1978.
Memphis Union Station was a passenger terminal in Memphis, Tennessee. It served as a hub between railroads of the Southwest, the Missouri Pacific Railroad and the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, and railroads of the Southeast, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway and the Southern Railway. The terminal, completed in 1912, was built in the Beaux-Arts style and was located on Calhoun Street, between south Second Street and Rayburn Boulevard. It was demolished in 1969. This location in south Memphis was approximately two blocks east of the other major Memphis railroad terminal, Memphis Grand Central Station.
The Indianapolis Union Station is an intercity train station in the Wholesale District of Indianapolis, Indiana. Currently, Amtrak's Cardinal line serves the terminal, passing through Indianapolis three times a week.
Halifax station is an inter-city railway terminal in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, operated by Via Rail.
The historic Subway Terminal, now Metro 417, opened in 1925 at 417 South Hill Street near Pershing Square, in the core of Los Angeles as the second, main train station of the Pacific Electric Railway; it served passengers boarding trains for the west and north of Southern California through a mile-long shortcut under Bunker Hill popularly called the "Hollywood Subway," but officially known as the Belmont Tunnel. The station served alongside the Pacific Electric Building at 6th & Main, which opened in 1905 to serve lines to the south and east. The Subway Terminal was designed by Schultze and Weaver in an Italian Renaissance Revival style, and the station itself lay underground below offices of the upper floors, since repurposed into the Metro 417 luxury apartments. When the underground Red Line was built, the new Pershing Square station was cut north under Hill Street alongside the Terminal building, divided from the Subway's east end by just a retaining wall. At its peak in the 20th century, the Subway Terminal served upwards of 20 million passengers a year.
The Southern Terminal is a former railway complex located at 306 West Depot Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. The complex, which includes a passenger terminal and express depot adjacent to a large railyard, was built in 1903 by the Southern Railway. Both the terminal and depot were designed by noted train station architect Frank Pierce Milburn (1868–1926). In 1985, the terminal complex, along with several dozen warehouses and storefronts in the adjacent Old City and vicinity, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Southern Terminal and Warehouse Historic District.
The Birmingham Special was a passenger train operated by the Southern Railway, Norfolk and Western Railway, and Pennsylvania Railroad in the southeastern United States. The train began service in 1909 and continued, with alterations, after Amtrak assumed control of most long-haul intercity passenger rail in the United States on May 1, 1971. The Birmingham Special is the namesake of the famed Glenn Miller big band tune "Chattanooga Choo Choo".
Terminal Station, Macon, Georgia, is a railroad station that was built in 1916, and is located on 5th St. at the end of Cherry St. It was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by architect Alfred T. Fellheimer (1875–1959), prominent for his design of Grand Central Terminal in New York City in 1903. The station building is part of the Macon Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. While no longer an active train station, it has been the location of the Macon Transit Authority bus hub since 2014.
Chattanooga Union Station, more commonly known as the Union Depot in Chattanooga, constructed between 1857 and 1859, served as a train car shed in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Located at Broad and Ninth Streets, the station was one of two major railroad terminals in the city, the other being the Southern Railway's Terminal Station.
Cincinnati Union Terminal is an intercity train station and museum center in the Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. It opened in 1933 as a union station to replace five train stations serving seven railroads in the city. Passenger service ceased in 1972, and the station concourse was demolished. From 1980 to 1985, the building housed a shopping mall. In 1991, the terminal saw the opening of the Cincinnati Museum Center and the return of Amtrak service.
The Marietta depot is a former freight and passenger stop in Marietta, Georgia. It was originally built in 1864 for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, a railroad between Chattanooga, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia. That railroad was absorbed by the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. In turn, the latter railroad was merged into the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1957.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)