Two postcards, one from the 1920s and one from the 1950s. The Beaux-Arts style station opened on 30 October 1914 as the second-largest train station in the USA. The building has a floor area of 850,000 square feet (79,000 m²), the ceiling in the Grand Hall is 95 feet (29 metres) high and the three chandeliers weigh 1.6 tonnes each. The Grand Hall clock has a six-foot (1.8-metre) diameter face.
Annual passenger traffic peaked in 1945 at 678,363. As train travel declined in the 1950s, the station was used increasingly less. By 1973, only 32,842 passengers passed through it, all Amtak passengers. The building was beginning to deteriorate but Kansas City Council wanted to preserve and redevelop it. A redevelopment deal was reached with Trizec, a Canadian redevelopment firm. Between 1979 and 1986, Trizec constructed two office buildings on surrounding property, but did not redevelop the station. In 1985, Amtrak moved all passenger operations to a smaller facility. By this time, the station was essentially closed.
But in 2002, Amtrak returned passenger train services to the station. There are currently two trains daily to and from St Louis, one daily train to Chicago and one daily train to the southwest (ultimately to Los Angeles). Of the twelve Missouri stations served by Amtrak, Kansas City was the second busiest last year, boarding or detraining an average of just under 400 passengers daily, over 4 times the number in 1973.
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In the summer of 2007, I worked as a security guard in the 15-story office building constructed between the station waiting room and the street to the east (right in the image). At that time, the Amtrak station was located beside the bottom concourse of the Trizec building's parking garage. It resembled a utilitarian bus station. The Amtrak schedule had trains arriving/departing between midnight and 8:00 a.m. Or, rather, that is when they did arrive, regardless of schedule. Baggage was still handled on the platforms and the baggage donkey and carts passed into Union Station. How that connected to the Amtrak shelter, I do not know. There was minimal work being done on Union Station at the time. Lots of pipe and conduit lying along the north face as I recall and the attitudes of residents towards Trizec was anything but warm.
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