Washington DC

Union Station

I will start off this blog, fittingly, with the station located scarcely 4 blocks from the hospital where I was born (this hospital no longer exists in this location). It is also located 3 blocks from the house where my father was born (the house no longer exists either, does this tell you something?). Washington Union Terminal, or Union Station as the "locals" called it (and still call it), was a child of, what else in DC, politics.

About 1900 Congress, both then and now the true "city council" of Washington DC decided that it was time to end the inconvenience, smoke, noise etc. that resulted from having two separate train stations, one for the B&O, one for the Pennsylvania RR (and the southern connections). The B&O was located on the NE corner of the Mall (roughly were the Taft Memorial is today) and the Pennsy on the south central border of the mall (near the Smithsonian and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing). While Congress initially told the railroads to each build a station, by the time the "politics" of the situation panned out, through something called "The McMillian Commission" the result was, as signed into law by Teddy Roosevelt, a single Union Station.

The architect chosen, Daniel Burnham, of Chicago's World Fair fame, had close ties to both the McMillian Commission and the Pennsy (have things ever be otherwise in DC?). He took as the basis of his design Baths of Diocletian. The result, Union Station, not only set the tone for the re-establishment of a Washington DC according to the original plans of Pierre L'Enfant, complete with its Mall and many monuments, but also a whole school of Public Architecture, Beax-Arts.