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.[3] The last Amtrak passenger train left the station in 1978.
In the 1980s, it was renovated as a hotel, shopping center, and entertainment complex. The 2010s and 2020s saw more renovation and expansion of entertainment and office capacity. The current hotel portion of the station is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[4]
Union Station was the largest and busiest train station in the world in 1894.Original track layoutAerial view, 1938
The station was opened on September 1, 1894, by the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. The station was designed by Theodore Link, and included three main areas: the Headhouse and the Midway, and the 11.5-acre (47,000m2) Train Shed designed by civil engineer George H. Pegram.[5] The headhouse originally housed a hotel, a restaurant, passenger waiting rooms and railroad ticketing offices. It featured a gold-leafed Grand Hall, Romanesque arches, a 65-foot (20m) barrel-vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows. The clock tower is 230 feet (70m) high.[6]
Union Station's headhouse and midway are constructed of Indiana limestone and initially included 32 tracks under its vast trainshed terminating in the stub-end terminal.
At its opening, it was the world's largest[7] and busiest railroad station and its trainshed was the largest roof span in the world.[citation needed]
20th century
In 1903, Union Station was expanded to accommodate visitors to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.[8] In the 1920s, it remained the largest American railroad terminal.[9]
At its height, the station combined the St. Louis passenger services of 22 railroads, the most of any single terminal in the world. In the 1940s, it handled 100,000 passengers a day.[3] During World War II, German actor Til Kiwe, was recaptured in the station's waiting room after escaping from a POW camp in Colorado.[10]
The 1940s expansion added a new ticket counter designed as a half-circle and a mural by Louis Grell could be found atop the customer waiting area which depicted the history of St. Louis with an old fashion steam engine, two large steamboats and the Eads Bridge in the background. The famous photograph of Harry S. Truman holding aloft the erroneous Chicago Tribune headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman", was shot at the station as Truman headed back to Washington, D.C., from Independence, Missouri, after the 1948 Presidential election.
As airliners became the primary mode of long-distance travel and railroad passenger services declined in the 1950s and 1960s, the massive station became obsolete and too expensive to maintain for its original purpose. By 1961, several tracks had been paved over for parking. Amtrak took over passenger service in 1971 but abandoned Union Station on October 31, 1978. By then, Amtrak had cut back service to four routes per day–the State House, the Ann Rutledge, the National Limited (formerly the Spirit of St. Louis) and the Inter-American. The eight total trains were nowhere near enough to justify the use of such a large facility. The last train to leave Union Station was a Chicago-bound Inter-American. Passenger service shifted to a temporary-style "Amshack" two blocks east. Amtrak has since moved its St. Louis service to the Gateway Transportation Center, one block east of Union Station.[8][11]
Union Station Festival Marketplace, also referred to as the Union Station Mall, was a festival marketplace in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, which was developed inside St. Louis Union Station as part of a 1980s redevelopment by The Rouse Company and Oppenheimer Properties. It was the last festival marketplace James W. Rouse had any involvement on with the main Rouse Company before he officially stepped down as chairman in 1984, focusing on his Enterprise Foundation subsidiary.
History (1978–1990s)
Following Union Station's closure as a rail terminal in 1978, The Rouse Company and Oppenheimer Properties[14] were selected to redevelop the area into a shopping center. Rouse and Oppenheimer hired HOK to design the Union Station Festival Marketplace, and the building officially reopened as a festival marketplace on August 29, 1985, with a 539-room hotel, shopping mall, restaurants and food court.[15] Federal historic rehabilitation tax credits were used to transform Union Station into one of the city's most visited attractions. The station rehabilitation by Conrad Schmitt Studios[16] remains one of the largest adaptive re-use projects in the United States. The hotel is housed in the headhouse and part of the train shed, which also houses a lake and shopping, entertainment and dining establishments. Omni Hotels was the original hotel operator, followed by Hyatt Regency Hotel chain and Marriott Hotels.
Decline and ownership changes (1990s–2010s)
Despite its initial success in the mid and late-1980s, Union Station Festival Marketplace quickly suffered from high maintenance costs due to the massive size of the former train station. Additionally, in the 1990s, for financial reasons, The Rouse Company began shifting from local vendors to national chains across all of its marketplaces, but doing that only made the mall's problems even worse, as it further gave shoppers little to no reason to visit Union Station Mall with paid parking rather than going to malls with similar options but with better advantages and are closer, such as the Saint Louis Galleria. Union Station Mall was essentially a "tourist-trap" for those specific reasons.[17]
The Riverfront Times stated that Union Station Mall had experienced a "slow, painful death."[17] Declining foot traffic and competition from suburban shopping centers also played a role in Union Station Mall's gradual failure, as despite its promotion as a tourist attraction, its only visitors were office workers stopping by to have lunch at the food court.[14]
21st century
Decline (continued)
The Rouse Company ultimately pulled out of the project in the late 1990s amid ongoing vacancies and high operating costs. St. Louis Union Station was put on foreclosure by an Illinois bank in March 2003 because the owners could not pay their mortgage. Union Station Mall was largely empty by 2005 during ongoing bankruptcy-related issues for the property's owners. However, the Union Station Hotel continued operations in a healthy state.[18]
In 2005, Mike Kelly of Chicago bought Union Station for $105 million. However, financial problems occured in 2008, and the station remained untouched. Union Station Mall was losing $1 million annually, and was soon owed back taxes by its holding company. Following these problems, Bob O'Loughlin was called for redevelopment. He stated, "The place needs a lot of fix-up."[14]
2010s–2020s redevelopment
St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station Entrance South TrainshedThe St. Louis Wheel at Union Station
In 2010–11, the station's Marriott Hotel in the main terminal building was expanded. It took over the station's Midway area; Union Station Mall closed its doors, and all of its stores were moved to the train shed shopping arcade. In 2012, Lodging Hospitality Management bought Union Station and rebranded the hotel as a DoubleTree.[19] In August 2016, Lodging Hospitality Management announced plans to renovate Union Station once again, included plans for an aquarium. The Memories Museum features artifacts and displays about the history of St. Louis Union Station and rail travel in the United States.[20] Located on the upper level of the train shed, the museum is a joint project of Union Station Associates and the National Museum of Transportation. The original architectural drawings and blueprints for Union Station and the original hotel are available to researchers at the Washington University Archives at Washington University in St. Louis.[21] Some architectural elements from the building have been removed in renovations and taken to the Sauget, Illinois, storage site of the National Building Arts Center.[22]
St. Louis Union Station was the venue for the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship component of the FIRST Championship, hosted in St. Louis every April until 2017, after which it was moved to Detroit.
The station's train shed area features The St. Louis Wheel, a 200ft (61m) high, 42 gondola observation wheel.
Inside the station is The St. Louis Rope Course, a 90,000 cubic feet (2,500m3), 3-story indoor ropes and zip line course.
Union Station has two light show features: one in the train shed area, and another inside Union Station Hotel's lobby.
In January 2020, Build-A-Bear Workshop moved their global headquarters to downtown St. Louis inside the 68,000ft (21,000m) Grand Central Building inside the Union Station complex. The company also opened their new Build-A-Bear Workshop Union Station headquarters store and also operates a Build-A-Bear Radio studio and other experiential elements at their new headquarters. Additionally, a Ferris wheel, aquarium, and an abundance of restaurants have been added to Union Station in 2020.
In 2020, the St. Louis Aquarium opened in the defunct Union Station Festival Marketplace space in the building.[23] At 120,000sqft (11,000m2), the aquarium is home to more than 13,000 animals representing over 250 species.
MetroLink, the St. Louis region's light rail system, serves Union Station via the Red and Blue lines. The station is located beneath the train shed in the historic Union Station Baggage Tunnel. This tunnel was originally constructed in the 1890s as a below grade transfer area for baggage between trains.[24] It was converted and opened for MetroLink usage in 1993 and has seen several renovations over the years, most notably in 2010 and 2016.[25][26] The tunnel is expected to see another major renovation in 2025.[27]
The city's major transportation hub, Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center, is located two blocks from Union Station. It also serves MetroLink in addition to local buses and national connections with Amtrak, Greyhound and other services.
Taxi and rideshare
St. Louis Union Station has 24-hour taxi service at its north entrance on Market Street.
Filming
In 1981, areas of the then disused station were used in the filming of John Carpenter's movie Escape from New York. A scene involving the captured President was shot in the station's train shed and the film's gladiatorial fight was staged in the Grand Hall.[28]
↑"Union Station". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on March 1, 2009. Retrieved June 28, 2008.
↑"For Nazi Officers, Trinidad's POW Camp Was the Great Escape". www.westword.com. November 21, 2017. Still, the obstacles didn't deter Captain Till Edward Kiefer, who was shot down over Tunisia in 1943 and escaped his American captors three times. For his most notable egress from the Trinidad camp, he used a vegetable dye to turn his dress uniform brown and arranged for a noncom to answer for him at roll call. He made it to St. Louis before someone noticed that there was an Aryan-looking fellow in full Nazi attire killing time in the train station waiting room.
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