The landmark Union Station in downtown Chicago is marking its 100th birthday this month.
According to a veteran reporter at the Chicago Tribune, the massive train station opened to the public in May 1925.
Union Station is sandwiched between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard, which are eastbound and westbound Route 66, respectively.
The newspaper explained why building Union Station was necessary:
With 22 railroad lines converging on Chicago, the city’s center was covered by a spider’s web of tracks. If one switch failed, a massive traffic jam ensued. In 1881, three lines made a dent in the problem. The Chicago & Alton, the Pittsburgh & Fort Wayne, and the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad jointly established a Union Depot between Madison and Clinton streets and just west of the Chicago River.
When trains pulled into a terminal, the final station on their route, it meant another train couldn’t use that track until its predecessor backed out. When Burnham got the contract to design the new Union Station, he placed it between two sets of multiple tracks. That “permitted trains from the east and west to enter and leave simultaneously,” the Tribune reported on the station’s July 23, 1925, opening day.
Daniel Burnham initially hatched the idea for the big train station, though he died more than a decade before it became reality.
The architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White finished the eight-story building that was estimated to cost $75 million.
The station contained a Women’s Waiting Room with a doctor and nurse at all times. Union Station also featured fine and casual dining restaurants run by the Fred Harvey Company and his famed Harvey Girls waitstaff.
The station included two jail cells, a morgue for travelers who died on a train, a chapel and a hospital for medical emergencies.
Though passenger rail diminished from 100 years ago, Union Station in Chicago remains the fourth-busiest in the United States. It handles 140,000 passengers on a typical weekday. It officially was declared a Chicago Landmark in 2002.
Route 66 remains inextricably linked to the railroad. The highway’s path often followed closely the main rail lines that ran from Chicago and Los Angeles.
(Image of Union Station in Chicago by Jim Bauer via Flickr)