The historic station was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham 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.
The station building was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and built between 1898 and 1904. 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 its 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 completed more than a dozen projects in Pittsburgh, some on quite prominent sites. The rotunda is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[2] Service began at the station on October 12, 1901.[5]
On January 3, 1954, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced a US$3,600,000 (equivalent to $38,749,572 in 2022) in expansion and renovation for the complex. To the beginning of the 1970s, the station remained a major stop for several of the PRR's leading east–west trains: Broadway Limited (Chicago-New York), Manhattan Limited (Chicago-New York); Penn Texas (St. Louis-New York) and Spirit of St. Louis (St. Louis-New York).
PRR train at Pittsburgh Union Station, March 31, 1968
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.[6] In 1974, the County Council proposed having the station be the site of the then-planned David L. Lawrence Convention Center.[7] The Buncher Development Company had an option to buy the property as late as 1984.[8]
A $20 million restoration of Union Station began in 1986 to convert the office tower into apartments.[9] It is now called “The Pennsylvanian” [1] 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, 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 an annex 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 also serviced by the Three Rivers (a replacement service for the 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).
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, as well as two afternoon rush-hour trains on the 42S (now the Red Line).[12] 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, and the building's structural supports are on each side of the tunnel, prohibiting the installation of a second track.[13] 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 on February 6, 2011, as part of the "Railvolution" transit convention in October 2018.,[14][15] and during concrete repair work in the downtown tunnels between Steel Plaza and Gateway Station in March 2023.[16]
Currently, there are plans to revive light rail service to Penn Station with the Brown Line.[17]
Greyhound Lines (at Grant Street Transportation Center)
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