Union Station (Pittsburgh)
Pennsylvania Station in Pittsburgh, Penn.
Union Station (or Pennsylvania Station, commonly called Penn Station by locals) is a historic train station at Grant Street and Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States.
History
Unlike many union stations built in the U.S. to serve the needs of more than one railroad, this facility connected the Pennsylvania Railroad with several subsidiary lines; for that reason it was renamed in 1912 to match other Pennsylvania Stations. Thus, Union Station is a misnomer, as other major passenger rail carriers served travelers at other stations. For instance, the Baltimore and Ohio, used Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Station.
The station building was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and built 1898–1903. The materials were a grayish-brown terra cotta that looked like brownstone, and brick. 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 train station is his: the rotunda with corner pavilions. At street level the rotunda sheltered turning spaces for carriages beneath wide low vaulted spaces that owed little to any historicist style. Above, the rotunda sheltered passengers in a spectacular waiting room. Burnham’s firm went on to complete more than a dozen projects in Pittsburgh, some on quite prominent sites. The rotunda is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
On January 3, 1954 the Pennsylvania Railroad announced a $31.3 million (2013 dollars) in expansion and renovation for the complex.
The restoration of Union Station in the mid-1980’s converted the office tower into apartments, and is now called The Pennsylvanian which 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 which once offered shelter for carriages to turn around 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 a smaller passenger area on the Liberty Avenue side of the building. It is the western terminus of Amtrak‘s Pennsylvanian route and is along the Capitol Limited route. Until 2005, Pittsburgh was served by a third daily train, the Three Rivers (a replacement service for the legendary Broadway Limited), an extended version of the Pennsylvanian that terminated in Chicago. Its cancellation marked the first time in Pittsburgh’s railway history that the city was served by just two daily passenger trains (the Pennsylvanian and Capitol Limited).
The Port Authority opened a spur to Penn Park station in 1988, to link the 1985 downtown subway to the East Busway. However, the line was difficult to integrate into other services, since it utilized a portion of an old single tracked former Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel. This tunnel travels beneath the US Steel Tower, and the building’s structural supports are on each side of the tunnel, prohibiting the installation of a second track. The station is still listed as part of the Red Line subway service but has had no regular service since 1993. As late as 2001, the line would only see, if any, up to two afternoon rush hour trains. It is not clear as to why service on this line was discontinued, but it is likely attributed to the aforementioned infrastructure limitations as well as limited ridership. Moreover, Penn Station is within the boundary of Port Authority’s “Free Fare Zone,” therefore service to the station does not generate any additional revenue.
The station continues to be used in extremely limited circumstances, including usage as part of the Port Authority’s detoured transportation routes following Super Bowl XLV on 6 February 2011.
