(rshsdepot) Seattle, WA (Union Station)

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From The Seattle Times.
 
Original article at:
_http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2008817649_pacificpdorp15.htm
l_ 
(http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2008817649_pacificpdorp15.html) 
 
 
Bernie Wagenblast
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
Seattle's Union Station made a grand entrance

Built on filled-in tideflats, Seattle's grand Union Station, in what is  now 
the Chinatown International District was a busy terminus for the Union  
Pacific and Milwaukee railroads.
 
Paul Dorpat
 
For the historical construction scene, a photographer from the Webster and  
Stevens studio stands on what was then a trestle on Fifth Avenue South a few  
feet south of King Street to record this work on Union Station.
 
The steel supports for the train station's vaulted roof are being set. The  
waiting lobby below it — what is now called the Great Hall — gave Union 
Pacific  and Milwaukee railroad riders a sublime welcome and/or goodbye. At its 
peak, the  Washington-Oregon Station (its other name) employed more than 100 men 
in the  baggage room to handle the almost 40 daily train arrivals and 
departures.
 
The station was built in 1910-11 at the corner of the reclaimed tideflats  
close to what would become the Chinatown International District. Three years  
earlier, the photographer would have looked into the sprawling gas-manufacturing 
 plant that then still filled this pit, which was sometimes called Gas Cove. 
(In  1907 the gas makers moved to Wallingford, now Gas Works Park, and lower 
Queen  Anne Hill, the "Blue Flame Building," to open the cove for the coming  
railroad.)
 
Three decades before that, trains loaded with coal were charging directly  
through this scene over a trestle to carry them up and onto the King Street  
wharf where California colliers waited for the coals of Newcastle and  Renton.
 
Now, much of the old cleaned-up cove between Fifth Avenue and Union Station  
is covered with pavement. The International District/Chinatown Station next to 
 Union Station now is the southern terminus for the Downtown Transit Tunnel;  
soon, Sound Transit Central Link light-rail trains will be stopping here as  
well.
 
A century ago the Union Pacific Railroad still had plans to continue north  
from here with its own tunnel beneath the city.
 
Check out Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard's blog at _www.pauldorpat.com_ 
(http://www.pauldorpat.com) .
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org
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