Union Station, Washington, D.C.

Union Station in Washington, D.C., opened in 1907 as a consolidated terminal for the city's competing railroads, designed by the architect Daniel Burnham in the Beaux-Arts style and sited a short distance from the United States Capitol. Its main hall is dominated by a barrel-vaulted coffered ceiling rising nearly 96 feet, ringed by classical statuary, and the station's grand facade and plaza were conceived as a formal gateway to the capital for arriving visitors. The building fell into disrepair through much of the twentieth century before a major restoration in the late 1980s converted portions of it to retail and dining use alongside its continued function as a working rail terminal, one of the busiest in the United States.