Union Station (Toronto)

Union Station is a major railway station and intermodal transportation hub in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the busiest transportation facility in the country, handling more than 72 million passengers a year. It was designed by the Montreal firm Ross and Macdonald in the Beaux-Arts style, with the Canadian Pacific Railway's Hugh Jones and the Toronto architect John M. Lyle assisting, and opened on August 6, 1927 in a ceremony led by Edward, Prince of Wales, who is said to have remarked on entering the Great Hall that Canadians built their train stations like cathedrals. The facade stretches 752 feet and is fronted by 22 Roman Tuscan limestone columns, each 40 feet tall and weighing 75 tons, while the Great Hall itself measures 250 by 88 feet, roofed with a coffered Guastavino tile ceiling above floors of Tennessee marble laid in herringbone pattern. The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada has called it one of the finest examples of Beaux-Arts railway station design in the country, and the building was declared a National Historic Site in 1975 and given Heritage Railway Station status in 1989.