The Architecture of the St Louis Station

Saint Louis Union Station The Saint Louis Union Station (Figure 1), located on Market Street between the 18th Street and the 20th Street in downtown Saint Louis, was built in 1894 to be used as a train shed and transportation for travelers. This enabled the travelers to get around whether it is around St. Louis, around the United States, and even into Canada. The architect of the St. Louis Union Station is a German-American man named Theodore C. Link after he had won the design competition for the need of building a bigger and better train station. The original owner who pushed for the building of this bigger train station is William Taussig. William Taussig wanted a big and grandeur train station that would rival against the bigger train stations such as those that was in New York or Chicago. St. Louis Union Station could have up to 18 trains at once inside the train station ready to go to other places (Figure 2). There were 32 train tracks outside of the train shed so there was lot of traffic and passengers that would come into the Union Station every day. However, as more technically innovations occurred such as airplanes, trains going around the country were being used less by the people who opted to travel in different ways. This led to the demise of train services at the Union Station with the last train pulling out of the Union Station on October 31, 1978. The St. Louis Union Station then fell into a state of disuse and disrepair until 1985 when plans for renovations occurred costing up to a total of $150 million dollars. After a much needed repair and restoration on construction of the structural integrity of the building along with the restoration of the decorations, both interior and exterior wise, by artisans and craftsmen, the St. Louis Union Station is now a bustling building fully of shops, restaurants, small amusements, and it also includes a grand hotel by the name of Hyatt Regency Hotel.
The architecture of St. Louis Union Station is

Bibliography: Freeman, Allen. The Nation 's Largest Single Act of Rehabilitation. Architecture v. 78 (April 1989) p. 82-7. Grant H. Roger et al. St. Louis Union Station. St. Louis Mercentile Library, 1994. Montesi, Albert, and Richard Deposki. Images of America: St. Louis Union Station. Chicago, IL: Arcadia Publishing, 2004. Parker, Edward C. Next Stop: St. Louis Union Station. St. Louis, Missouri: Patrice Press, 1989.