The Washington Station is in full accord with the wonderful architectural development of that city, and has a setting in the creation of a great facing plaza, in which 100,000 troops may be gathered in review. Some day the plaza is to be surrounded by a group of public buildings but even in that day the white marble station, exceeding in size all other Washington buildings save the Capitol itself, will remain the dominating feature of that facing plaza. It has been created in simple classic outline, a vaulted train-shed being purposely omitted, in order that the station should not overshadow the proportions of the near-by Capitol.
Similarly, the vaulted train-shed has been omitted in the splendid new white granite terminal which the Chicago and Northwestern Railway has just completed on the West Side of Chicago. That new terminal is a real addition to a town which has long boasted two model stations—one in La Salle Street and the other upon the Lake Front. The Northwestern terminal is one of the fine architectural features of Chicago—a structure of classic design, the dominating feature of which is a colonnaded portico, monumental in type and towering to a height of 120 feet above the main street entrance.
This new terminal has a possible capacity of a quarter of a million passengers each day. It has some novel features for the comfort of passengers. A great many travellers cross Chicago in the course of twenty-four hours; in many cases this is the single break in a weary and dirty journey. For these, the new terminal not only provides the customary lounging rooms and barber shops, but also private baths. There is a series of rooms where invalids, women with children, or other persons seeking privacy, may go directly by private elevator where they may rest while waiting for connecting trains. For women there are tea-rooms and hospital rooms, with trained nurses in attendance. That is almost the last note in comfort for the traveller. There are, in addition to all these, private rooms where the suburbanite may change into his evening clothes and proceed in his various social duties, changing back again before he catches his late train out into the country.
New York City is still in the process of rebuilding and readjusting her gateways. Two magnificent terminals in her metropolitan district have already been finished; the third is still under construction. The first of these terminals is a real water-gate, built for the Lackawanna Railroad and situated in Hoboken, just across the Hudson River from the corporate New York. It is a handsome architectural creation in steel and concrete. Its tall clock-tower dominates the river front by night and day and those who come and go through its portals find themselves in a succession of white and vaulted hallways and concourses that suggest a library or museum more than the mere commercial structure of a railroad corporation.
An interesting feature of the Hoboken Station is the abandonment of the high train-shed such as has come to be a distinguishing feature of some of the world’s great terminals. Engine smoke and gases work havoc with the structural steel work of such sheds, and the engineers of the Hoboken Station fashioned a low-lying roof, slotted to receive the locomotive stacks. The result is a clean train-house, yet admirably protected from the stress of weather. It is a novel note in terminal engineering.
The Pennsylvania Station, opened in November, 1910, has already become one of the notable landmarks of New York. Beneath it disappeared the biggest hole ever excavated at one time in the metropolitan city; for the great station is not so famed either for its architectural beauty or for the completeness of its details (although it is in the foreguard of the world’s great terminals in both of these regards), as for the stupendous engineering project that was found necessary to connect it with the trunk-line railroads that it serves. To the west, this takes form in two parallel tunnels underneath the city, the Hudson River, and the Jersey Heights; to the east a still heavier traffic, composed of empty trains in Pennsylvania service and a great army of Long Island commuters, is carried under the very heart of Manhattan Island and under the East River in four parallel tunnels. Trains run for six miles under the greatest city of the continent, with its flanking rivers and environs, without ever seeing more than a momentary flash of daylight. The terminal has no train-shed or other of the familiar external appearances of the usual railroad station in a large city.
A model American railroad station—the Union Station of the New York Central,
Boston & Albany, Delaware & Hudson, and West Shore railroads at Albany
