Union Station, also known as Pennsylvania Station and commonly called Penn Station, is a historic

train station A train station, railroad station, or railway station is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight, or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track, and a station building providing suc ...

Downtown Pittsburgh Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, and officially the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River an ...

, Pennsylvania. It was one of several passenger rail stations that served

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

during the 20th century; others included the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Station, the Baltimore and Ohio Station, and Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal, and it is the only surviving station in active use. The historic station was designed by Chicago architect

Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the ''Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been "the most successful power broker the American archi ...

and built from 1898 to 1904. The station's rotunda was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, followed by the entire building in 1976. In the 1980s, the Burnham station building was converted to apartment use, while Amtrak moved to an annex on the building's east side.

History

The current station replaced the original Union Station which was destroyed in the Pittsburgh railroad strike of 1877. Unlike many

union station A union station, union terminal, joint station, or joint-use station is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway company, railway companies, allowing passengers to connect conveniently bet ...

s built in the U.S. to serve the needs of more than one railroad, this facility served only the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...

and its subsidiary lines. Thus, ''Union Station'' is a misnomer, for that reason, it was renamed in 1912 to match other Pennsylvania Stations. Other major passenger rail carriers served travelers at other stations. For instance, the

New York Central The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midw ...

used the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Station, the

Wabash Railroad The Wabash Railroad was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. It served a large area, including track in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri and the province of Ontario. Its primary con ...

used Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal, and the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the oldest railroads in North America, oldest railroad in the United States and the first steam engine, steam-operated common carrier. Construction of the line began in 1828, and it operated as B&O from 1830 ...

used both their own Baltimore and Ohio Station and the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie station. The station building was designed by Chicago architect

and built between 1898 and 1904. The materials were a grayish-brown

terra cotta Terracotta, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based Vitrification#Ceramics, non-vitreous ceramicOED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used ...

that looked like

brownstone Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material. Ty ...

, and

brick A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a unit primarily composed of clay. But is now also used informally to denote building un ...

. Though Burnham is regarded more as a planner and organizer rather than a designer of details, which were left to draftsmen like Peter Joseph Weber, the most extraordinary feature of the monumental

is its rotunda with corner pavilions. At street level, the rotunda sheltered turning spaces for

carriage A carriage is a two- or four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle for passengers. In Europe they were a common mode of transport for the wealthy during the Roman Empire, and then again from around 1600 until they were replaced by the motor car around 1 ...

s beneath wide, low vaulted spaces that owed little to any historicist style. Above, the rotunda sheltered passengers in a spectacular

waiting room A waiting room or waiting hall is a building, or more commonly a part of a building or a room, where people sit or stand until the event or appointment for which they are waiting begins. There are two types of physical waiting room. One has in ...

. Burnham's firm completed more than a dozen projects in Pittsburgh, some on quite prominent sites. The rotunda is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

. Service began at the station on October 12, 1901. On January 3, 1954, the

announced a in expansion and renovation for the complex. Into the beginning of the 1970s, the station remained a major stop for several of the PRR's leading east–west trains: ''

Broadway Limited The ''Broadway Limited'' was a passenger train operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) between New York City and Chicago from 1912 to 1995. It was the Pennsylvania's premier train, competing directly with the New York Central Railroad's '' 2 ...

'' (Chicago–New York), '' Manhattan Limited'' (Chicago–New York); '' Penn Texas'' (St. Louis–New York) and ''

Spirit of St. Louis The ''Spirit of St. Louis'' (formally the Ryan NYP, registration: N-X-211) is the custom-built, single-engine, single-seat, high-wing monoplane that Charles Lindbergh flew on May 20–21, 1927, on the Charles Lindbergh#New York–Paris flight ...

'' (St. Louis–New York). By the late 1970s the Penn Central Corporation was accepting bids for the complex and it was purchased by the US General Services Administration. There were proposals in 1978 to make the structure into a federal office building, a new city hall, and a senior citizens apartment building. Amtrak proposed that the whole structure remain a train station and rail offices. In 1974, the County Council proposed having the station be the site of the then-planned David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The Buncher Development Company had an option to buy the property as late as 1984. A $20 million restoration of Union Station began in 1986 to convert the office tower into apartments. It is now called the Pennsylvanian and opened to residents on May 23, 1988. The concourse, which is no longer open to the public, was transformed into a lobby for commercial spaces on the ground floor and the paint cleaned off the great central skylight. The rotunda is now closed to vehicular traffic; modern cars and trucks are too heavy for the brick road surface and risk caving in the roof to the parking garage below it.

Current passenger service

Union Station continues to serve as an active railway station, but through an annex on the Liberty Avenue side of the building. It is the western terminus of

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

's '' Pennsylvanian'' route and is along the ''Floridian'' route. Until 2005, Pittsburgh was also served by the '' Three Rivers'' (a replacement service for the ''

''), an extended version of the ''Pennsylvanian'' that terminated in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. Its cancellation marked the first time in Pittsburgh's railway history that the city was served by just two daily passenger trains.

Architecture

In September 1978, ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' art critic

Brendan Gill Brendan Gill (October 4, 1914 – December 27, 1997) was an American journalist. He wrote for ''The New Yorker'' for more than 60 years. Gill also contributed film criticism for ''Film Comment'', wrote about design and architecture for Architectu ...

proclaimed that Pittsburgh's Penn Station is "one of the great pieces of

Beaux-Arts architecture Beaux-Arts architecture ( , ) was the academic architectural style taught at the in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporated Renaissance and ...

in America... ne of thesymbols of the nation."

Pittsburgh Regional Transit

Bus Rapid Transit

Penn Station is an at grade station operated by

Pittsburgh Regional Transit Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) is the public agency responsible for most public transportation services in the Greater Pittsburgh region in Pennsylvania. It is the second-largest public transit agency in Pennsylvania and the 20th-largest in ...

. The station is located on the

Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway is a two-lane bus rapid transit, bus-only highway serving the city of Pittsburgh and many of its eastern neighborhoods and suburbs. It was named after Martin Luther King Jr. in recognition of the eastern ...

and is served by busway routes P1, P2, P7, P10, P12, P16, P17, P67, P68, P69, P71, P76 and P78. East of the station is a bus layover area and the East Liberty Garage used by routes 1, 6, 11, 15, 19L, 29, 31, 39, 40, 44 and G31. These routes serve the Penn Station busway stops immediately before going out of service and are the first stops they make as they go into service. Routes 86, 87, 88 and 91 stop just outside of the station on Liberty and Penn Avenues.

Light Rail Transit

There is also a seldom used light rail station at the site. It opened in 1988 with regular shuttle service to

Steel Plaza station Steel Plaza station is a station on the Pittsburgh Regional Transit's light rail network, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It serves the city's Downtown district and is located at the intersection of Grant Street and Oliver Avenue. The ...

, as well as two afternoon rush-hour trains on the 42S (now the Red Line). However, the station was difficult to integrate into other services, since it used a single-tracked former Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel. This tunnel travels beneath the

US Steel Tower The U.S. Steel Tower, also known as the Steel Building, or USX Tower (1988–2001), is a 64-story skyscraper at 600 Grant Street in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The interior has of leasable space. At tall, it is the tallest building i ...

, and the building's structural supports are on each side of the tunnel, prohibiting the installation of a second track. The shuttle service was discontinued in 1993, but the two 42S afternoon rush-hour trains continued to serve the station until 2007. Since 2007, the station has seen occasional use, mostly for charters or special events, such as part of the agency's detoured transportation routes following

Super Bowl XLV Super Bowl XLV was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Pittsburgh Steelers and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Green Bay Packers to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion ...

on February 6, 2011, as part of the "Railvolution" transit convention in October 2018, and during concrete repair work in the downtown tunnels between Steel Plaza and Gateway Station in March 2023. Currently, there are plans to revive light rail service to Penn Station with the Brown Line.

Suburban transit connections

* Beaver County Transit Authority Route 1 * Butler Transit Authority * Fayette Area Coordinated Transportation Commuter * New Castle Area Transit Authority Route 71 * Washington City Transit Washington-Pittsburgh * Westmoreland County Transit Authority Routes 1F, 2F, 3F, 14F

Intercity bus connections

Grant Street Transportation Center

Across the street is the Grant Street Transportation Center. It serves as an intercity bus station for: *

Amtrak Thruway Amtrak Thruway is a system of through-ticketed transportation services to connect passengers with areas not served by Amtrak trains. In most cases these are dedicated motorcoach routes, but can also be non-dedicated intercity bus services, transi ...

Greyhound Lines Greyhound Lines, Inc. is an American operator of Intercity bus service, intercity bus services. Greyhound operates the largest intercity bus network in the United States, and also operates charter and Amtrak Thruway services, as well as interci ...

* Fullington Trailways * Mid Mon Valley Transit Authority * Mountain Line Transit Authority

Gallery

File:Pittsburgh Union Station Rotunda 1876px.jpg, The rotunda File:Pittsburgh Union Station clock.jpg, Exterior clock File:Waiting_room_Union_Station_Pittsburgh.JPG, Amtrak annex interior File:Union Station - Pittsburgh.jpg, Union Station, ca. 1910 File:Pittsburgh Penn Station.jpg, East Busway station near the railroad building. File:Pittsburgh LRT Penn Station 2.jpg, T station, with no regular service since 1993. File:19940529 01 PAT LRT, Penn Station, Pittsburgh (5247864668).jpg, T station in 1994 showing chartered light rail train.

References

External links

Images of Union Station, PittsburghThe Pennsylvanian
* * *
Magazine article from ''Railway Age'' (1901) with floor plan
{{Authority control Beaux-Arts architecture in Pennsylvania Railway stations in Pittsburgh History of Pittsburgh

Railway stations in the United States opened in 1903 Transit centers in the United States Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks Skyscraper office buildings in Pittsburgh Residential buildings in Pittsburgh Residential condominiums in the United States Railway stations on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Clock towers in Pennsylvania Historic American Buildings Survey in Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Pittsburgh 1903 establishments in Pennsylvania

Port Authority of Allegheny County stations Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway