Union Passenger Station

About this property

The Union Passenger Station in Tacoma, Washington, United States, opened in 1911. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It now serves as a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. The distinctive architecture, dominated by a copper dome, is a landmark for the area. Tacoma's reputation as the "City of Destiny" began when it was chosen by the Northern Pacific Company in 1873 as the western terminus of the northern route of the transcontinental railroad, then under construction. The city became a center for industrial and commercial development. Its economy expanded rapidly over the next two decades, and its population skyrocketed from just under 2,000 in 1873 to 37,714 in 1890. The city's first rail station was built in 1883, then moved to the site of the present Union Station on Pacific Avenue and enlarged in 1892. In 1906 the architectural firm of Reed and Stem was selected to design a new station more befitting Tacoma's image as a prosperous, thriving metropolis and railway terminus of the Northwest. Construction of Union Station began in 1909 and was completed on May 1, 1911. Acclaim for Reed and Stem's design was immediate. The Tacoma Daily Ledger praised it as "the largest, the most modern and in all ways the most beautiful and best equipped passenger station in the Pacific Northwest". Despite optimistic forecasts by the railroad companies early in the century, the future would not be kind to the passenger rail industry. Railway ridership peaked in the 1930s and again during World War II, then quickly declined as the automobile became America's preferred mode of transportation. The façade of Union Station was damaged by the April 29, 1965, earthquake that struck the Puget Sound region. The station was evacuated after bricks and masonry fell from the building onto the sidewalk in front of Pacific Avenue. On May 1, 1971, Amtrak took over national passenger services from private railroads, including several operated by the Burlington Northern Railroad (the successor to Northern Pacific) that stopped at Union Station. The Tacoma offices relocated to Seattle and Amtrak built a new Tacoma station on Puyallup Avenue east of Freighthouse Square. The last passenger train left Union Station on June 14, 1984, and the abandoned building soon fell into disrepair. The tracks and 136-foot (41 m) concourse were planned to be demolished to clear room for Interstate 705, a new freeway that would serve Downtown Tacoma. The demolition was opposed by a group called Tacoma Spur Alternatives, which filed a lawsuit to halt the project that it later dropped. Several hours after the lawsuit was dropped on August 3, 1984, demolition of the concourse began.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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