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Modern Copies of the Baths of Caracalla

Union Station was crucial to the development of modern Washington. A major renovation was completed in 1989, and the building now serves as a National Visitor Center, in addition to being a terminal for train and subway service. When the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads announced in 1901 that they planned to build a new terminal, people in the city celebrated for two reasons. The decision meant, first of all, that the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) would soon remove its tracks and terminal from the Mall. Though changes there appeared only gradually, the PRR's move allowed the creation of the Mall as it appeared today. Second, the plans to bring all the city's railroads under one roof promised that Washington would finally have a station large enough to handle large crowds and impressive enough to reflect the growing importance of the United States. Architects Daniel Burnham and Peirce Anderson used a number of techniques to convey this message: neoclassical elements that connected Washington to Athens and Rome; a massive scale, including a facade stretching more than 600' and a waiting room ceiling 96' above the floor; expensive materials such as marble, gold leaf, and granite from a previously unused quarry; and an orientation that faced their building towards the US Capitol, just five blocks away.

When the station, designed by famed architect Daniel Burnham, first opened, six railroads brought passengers to Washington. World War I and World War II troops destined for overseas service passed through the station, stopping at the USO Lounge, on their way to war. It hosted presidents and royalty and housed a bowling alley and a hotel. President Taft first used the Presidential Suite, and President Truman traveled by charter train from Union Station to Philadelphia for the 1951 Army-Navy football game. At the height of rail travel during World War II, 100,000 people passed through the station daily. The terminal quickly became a center of Washington life, but at no time was it busier than during World War II, when as many as 200,000 people passed through in a single day.

Like most American railroad stations, its financial and physical condition deteriorated after the war as train travel declined. In the 1960s and 1970s the Federal government tried unsuccessfully to make it into a visitor center. After falling into disrepair in the late 1970s, Congress called upon then-Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole who worked with then Amtrak president, W. Graham Claytor, Jr., to develop a plan to restore the station to its former glory. Through a public/private partnership, the station was completely renovated and reopened to much fanfare on September 29, 1988. Since that day, Union Station has grown to become one of the most-visited destinations in Washington and has become a model for the redevelopment of historic train stations across the country.

Amtrak began operations at Union Station on May 1, 1971 and since that time the station has hosted Presidential Inaugurals and university graduations as well as the December 2000 launch of America's first high-speed train, Acela Express. More than 32 million visitors pass through the station every year including shoppers and diners as well as subway and rail passengers, making it the most visited site in Washington, DC. The station reopened in its present form in 1988 with shops, restaurants, and movie theaters occupying the original building, and a new Amtrak terminal at the back. Today Union Station is again one of Washington's busiest and best-known places, visited by 20 million people each year.

Ottawa's Union Station, built a year after Penn Station (in 1912) is another replica of the Baths of Caracalla. Therefore, this train station's departures hall now provides, at half the scale of Pennsylvania Station in New York City, a good idea of what the interior of Penn Station would have looked like. Union Station built in 1914 (officially opened in 1927) is the largest and most opulent railway station erected in Canada. The building was designed by the architecture firm of Ross and Macdonald, with assistance from the CPR's architect Hugh Johnes, as well as Toronto architect John M. Lyle. Its design was cited in 1975 by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada as being of "national architectural significance as one of the finest examples of Beaux Arts railway station design in Canada.

Chicago's Union Station is similar as well. Chicago Union Station was proposed in Daniel Hudson Burnham's Plan of Chicago in 1909, and built in 1925-26. The Concourse Building itself was modelled after the interior of Pennsylvania Station in New York, which was modelled after the Roman baths of Caracalla. Unfortunately, it was demolished in 1969 and was replaced by an office tower of no architectural significance whatever.

The original North American "Baths of Caracalla" train station, New York's old Penn Station, is one of New York City's main railway stations, sharing the Pennsylvania Station name with several stations in other cities. The original structure was a pink-granite exercise in a gigantic and sober colonnaded Doric order embodying the sophisticated integration of multiple functions and circulation of people and goods that is an under-appreciated achievement of the outwardly glamorous and occasionally pompous Beaux-Arts movement. McKim, Mead and White's Pennsylvania Station combined frank glass-and-steel train sheds and a magnificently-proportioned concourse with a breath-taking monumental entrance to New York City, immortalized in films (see link below). From the street, twin carriageways, modelled after Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, led to the two railroads that the building served, the Pennsylvania and the Long Island Rail Road. The main waiting room, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, approximated the scale of St. Peter's nave in Rome, expressed here in a steel framework clad in travertine.

Commonly known as Penn Station, it is located in the underground levels of Pennsylvania Plaza, an urban complex located at 32nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in Manhattan. Madison Square Garden is located atop the station. The name comes from its original owner, the Pennsylvania Railroad. Penn Station is located at the center of the Northeast Corridor, an electrified passenger railroad line extending from Washington, DC to Boston, Massachusetts. The station is served (used) by a number of passenger rail services including Amtrak (the station's owner), Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and the New York City Subway which does not actually share tracks into Penn Station, but has two stations at the eastern and western ends, with direct entrances in and out the concourse. PATH has a station a block east at 6th Avenue & West 33rd Street.

The current facility is the substantially remodelled underground remnant of a much grander structure built between 1905 and 1910. Designed by Charles McKim of the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the original Pennsylvania Station of legend was an outstanding masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New York City. The above-ground portion of the original structure was demolished in the mid 1960s to make room for the current Pennsylvania Plaza/Madison Square Garden complex. Many alarmed citizens protested with vigor and eloquence, but the commission ruled in favor of the proposed value, not the existing value of the site. The civic groups were swiftly defeated and on October 28th, 1963, a rainy Monday morning, the destruction of Penn Station commenced. It took a full three years to tear down the marble and granite masterpiece that Charles McKim had built to last forever. Its Doric columns, sculpted angels and Jules Guerin murals were hastily tossed into a New Jersey swamp and soon thereafter pulverized into dust. Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in the New York Times: "Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about twenty-five centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man."

Redemption lies across the street in the Farley Building, a landmark also designed by McKim, Meade and White. Moynihan Station will allow passengers to move through an organized, elegant public space. The project utilizes the entire Farley Building west of the walk-in Post Office facility off Eighth Avenue, which will remain open. The centerpiece of the project will be a new 300,000 square foot train station providing access to each of the eleven train platforms that currently serve Penn Station.