St. Louis Union Station is a former train station and National Historic Landmark in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Opened in 1894, it was the largest station in the world with 31 tracks under an enclosed train shed. Passenger traffic peaked at 100,000 people a day in the 1940s. The last Amtrak passenger train left the station in 1978.
In the 1980s, it was renovated as a hotel, shopping center, and entertainment complex. The 2010s and 2020s saw more renovation and expansion of entertainment and office capacity. The hotel at the station, operated under the Curio brand, is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
An adjacent station serves the MetroLink light rail system, which has two lines that run under the station in the Union Station subway tunnel. The city's intercity terminal, the Gateway Transportation Center, sits to the south, serving MetroLink, Amtrak, and Greyhound Bus.
History 19th century
The station was opened on September 1, 1894, by the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. The station was designed by Theodore Link, and included three main areas: the Headhouse and the Midway, and the Train Shed designed by civil engineer George H. Pegram. The headhouse originally housed a hotel, a restaurant, passenger waiting rooms and railroad ticketing offices. It featured a gold-leafed Grand Hall, Romanesque arches, a barrel-vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows. The clock tower is high.
Union Station's headhouse and midway are constructed of Indiana limestone and initially included 32 tracks under its vast trainshed terminating in the stub-end terminal.
At its opening, it was the world's largest and busiest railroad station and its trainshed was the largest roof span in the world.
20th century In 1903, Union Station was expanded to accommodate visitors to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. In the 1920s, it remained the largest American railroad terminal.
At its height, the station combined the St. Louis passenger services of 22railroads, the most of any single terminal in the world. In the 1940s, it handled 100,000passengers a day. During World War II, German actor Til Kiwe, was recaptured in the station's waiting room after escaping from a POW camp in Colorado.
The 1940s expansion added a new ticket counter designed as a half-circle and a mural by Louis Grell could be found atop the customer waiting area which depicted the history of St. Louis with an old fashion steam engine, two large steamboats and the Eads Bridge in the background. The famous photograph of Harry S. Truman holding aloft the erroneous Chicago Tribune headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman", was shot at the station as Truman headed back to Washington, D.C., from Independence, Missouri, after the 1948 Presidential election.
As airliners became the primary mode of long-distance travel and railroad passenger services declined in the 1950s and 1960s, the massive station became obsolete and too expensive to maintain for its original purpose. By 1961, several tracks had been paved over for parking. Amtrak took over passenger service in 1971 but abandoned Union Station on October 31, 1978. By then, Amtrak had cut back service to four routes per day–the State House, the Ann Rutledge, the National Limited (formerly the Spirit of St. Louis) and the Inter-American. The eight total trains were nowhere near enough to justify the use of such a large facility. The last train to leave Union Station was a Chicago-bound Inter-American. Passenger service shifted to a temporary-style "Amshack" two blocks east. Amtrak has since moved its St. Louis service to the Gateway Transportation Center, one block east of Union Station. The source says there were three daily trains when there were actually four.
The station was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970, as an important surviving example of large-scale railroad architecture from the late 19th century. It was designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1981.
1980s commercial redevelopment: Shopping mall and hotel
The St. Louis Union Station Mall was a festival marketplace in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri, United States, which was developed inside St. Louis Union Station as part of a 1980s redevelopment by the Rouse Company. It was the last festival marketplace James W. Rouse had any involvement on with the main Rouse Company before he officially stepped down as Chairman of the Board in May 1984, focusing on his Enterprise Foundation subsidiary.
The St. Louis Union Station Hotel, Curio Collection by Hilton was also developed by the Rouse Company as part of the major renovation and reconstruction of the former train station, originally opening simultaneously with the mall under the Omni Hotels & Resorts brand. , the hotel remains operational, but , the mall has been completely gutted and transformed into an aquarium due to major vacancies and a sharp decline in traffic, which led to its closure in February 2016; furthermore, the shopping center was unprofitable.
1978–1985: Development and opening Following Union Station's closure as a rail terminal in 1978, The Rouse Company of Columbia, Maryland, and General Partner Steve Miller of the New York-based investment firm Oppenheimer Gateway Properties were selected and interested, respectively, to redevelop the area into a shopping center. Rouse formed the subsidiary St. Louis Union Station Beergarten, Inc. for development of the mall, Rouse Missouri Management Corporation for the facility's day-to-day operations, and hired HOK to design the Union Station Mall, and the building officially reopened as a festival marketplace on August 29, 1985, with a 539-room hotel known as St. Louis Union Station Hotel, a shopping mall (including a concourse known as Midway Shops), restaurants, and the Picnic Express, a food court. Original tenants included the Disney Store, The Fudgery, Banana Republic, Landry's Seafood House, and Talbots. Federal historic rehabilitation tax credits were used to transform Union Station into one of the city's most visited attractions. The station rehabilitation by Conrad Schmitt StudiosArtisans here put skills to work restoring St. Louis train station – The Milwaukee Sentinel – Aug 29, 1985 remains one of the largest adaptive reuse projects in the United States. The hotel is housed in the headhouse and part of the train shed, which also houses a lake and shopping, entertainment and dining establishments. Omni Hotels was the original hotel operator, followed by the Hyatt Regency Hotel chain and Marriott Hotels.
1990s: Decline Weeks prior to when the mall opened, St. Louis Centre, the largest urban shopping mall in the U.S., had its grand opening on August 8, 1985, initially operated by Simon Property Group. Despite its initial success in the mid and late 1980s, Union Station Mall quickly suffered from high maintenance costs due to the massive size of the former train station. Additionally, in the 1990s, for financial reasons, The Rouse Company began shifting from local vendors to national chains across all of its marketplaces, including Union Station, leading to the opening of Hooters, but doing that only made the mall's problems even worse, as it gave shoppers little to no reason to visit Union Station Mall with paid parking rather than going to malls with similar options but with advantages they found were superior, such as the Saint Louis Galleria, which does not have paid parking, essentially making Union Station Mall a tourist trap.
St. Louis Station Associates sold the property in 1998. The Rouse Company announced in the summer of that year that Hard Rock Cafe would open on the first floor of the St. Louis Union Station Mall in August as a revitalization effort. The restaurant had its grand opening on August 24, 1998. The Riverfront Times stated that Union Station Mall had experienced a "slow, painful death." Declining foot traffic and competition from suburban shopping centers also played a role in Union Station Mall's gradual failure, as despite its promotion as a tourist attraction, its only visitors were office workers stopping by to have lunch at the food court.
21st century Decline (continued) The Rouse Company sold the mall and hotel portion of Union Station around October 1999, along with many other underperforming properties, to focus on its shift towards open-air shopping centers, amid ongoing vacancies and high operating costs. St. Louis Union Station was put into foreclosure by an Illinois bank in March 2003 because the new owners could not pay their mortgage. Union Station Mall was largely empty by 2005 during ongoing bankruptcy-related issues for the property's owners. Competition from the November 2003 opening and early success of St. Louis Mills in Hazelwood further harmed the mall's daily foot traffic. However, the Union Station Hotel continued operations in a healthy state.
In 2005, Michael J. Kelly of Chicago bought Union Station for $105million. However, financial problems occurred in 2008, and the station remained untouched. Union Station Mall was losing $1million annually and was soon owed back taxes by its holding company. Following these problems, Bob O'Loughlin was called for redevelopment. He stated, "The place needs a lot of fix-up."
2010s: Redevelopment as St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station
The St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station is an aquarium inside the St. Louis Union Station in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri, replacing the original shopping mall inside the complex, which struggled from high vacancies and low foot traffic.
2010–2019: Development and opening In 2010to 2011, the station's Marriott Hotel in the main terminal building was expanded. It took over the station's Midway area; the majority of Union Station Mall's stores were relocated to the train shed shopping arcade. In 2012, Lodging Hospitality Management (LHM) bought Union Station and rebranded the hotel as a DoubleTree.Trains could return to St. Louis Union Station
On January 11, 2016, LHM announced that St. Louis Union Station would be redeveloped, converting vacant storefronts on the upper floors into 48 locomotive-themed hotel rooms to expand the existing hotel. The remains of the mall would be converted into a family entertainment center; building on the success of the Grand Hall's indoor projection shows, the announcement detailed a new outdoor Fire & Light Show at the lake, featuring synchronized fountains, fire bursts, a cantilevered net hammock space over the water, and 3D projection mapping across the historic hotel facade. of indoor mall space would be cleared out for a secret, blockbuster family attraction.
The mall's interior closed to the public on February 1, 2016 to allow for construction, with the last remaining tenants not in the cleared out areas to only have public access within exterior entrances. On August 9, 2016, Lodging Hospitality Management revealed plans to redevelop the largely vacant mall into a $45million, aquarium. The Memories Museum features artifacts and displays about the history of St. Louis Union Station and rail travel in the United States. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on November 2, 2017, where officials announced that construction would commence by the end of Thanksgiving of that year, and an opening date would be expected to happen in the summer of 2019.