Design

America's Train Stations: An Architectural Explainer

Long before America had a distinct sense of buildings as corporate branding, rail lines were busy laying the very track of the idea.
Union Station's Great Hall in Washington, D.C. before undergoing restoration work in 1980.Carol Highsmith/Library of Congress

The golden age of U.S. rail travel, stretching roughly from 1830 to 1930, has left us a submerged built legacy of fervid competition, early standardized construction and design, and some of the earliest recognizable efforts to wield architecture as explicit corporate branding.

Contemporary architectural advertisements—from gas stations to office towers—are made to instantly transmit a brand in physical form. Rail companies were working from a rougher, earlier template, but one explicitly concerned with transmitting a message through station appearance about the desirability of travel on their lines. The railroad station, which began as a practical necessity, was soon understood as a valuable means of enticing passengers onto a train for a vacation or to a new home.