Chicago Union Station: Burnham's Plan and the Great Hall

By Solomon Rokowsky

October 27, 2026

The headhouse and Great Hall of Chicago Union Station. Photo: Jeramey Jannene. Source. CC BY 2.0. Resized.

Chicago Union Station is a great American railway terminal that still works as a station. Trains from across the country arrive here, and commuters pour through it every weekday. The Great Hall, with its barrel-vaulted skylight and long benches, has also served as a film set many times.

The station sits on a full city block in the West Loop. The Chicago Architecture Center lists the address as 500 W. Jackson Boulevard, and the station's own website uses 225 South Canal Street. It opened on May 16, 1925, according to the Chicago Public Library. Its story starts earlier, in a plan for the city that Daniel Burnham published in 1909.

Burnham's vision

The Architecture Center says Burnham saw the station as a major part of the development of the West Loop in his 1909 Plan of Chicago. He considered it prudent to consolidate train stations and free up land for development, in a city that was still growing after the Great Fire of 1871.

Burnham died in 1912. The design and construction passed to Graham, Burnham & Co., later Graham, Anderson, Probst & White. Construction began in 1913, the Chicago Public Library says, and the station opened in 1925 after about ten years of work. The American Planning Association says World War I caused delays. The cost was $75 million, which the Architecture Center puts at more than a billion dollars today.

The Canal Street colonnade. The Commons title says 1925, but this is a modern photograph. Photo: Vincent Desjardins. Source. CC BY-SA 2.0. Resized.

A union of four railroads

The name describes the owners. The Architecture Center says the station was built by a consortium of four railroads: the Pennsylvania, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Michigan Central and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. Sharing one terminal was cheaper than running four.

The Chicago Public Library and the station's website both note that construction included more than the building. It also covered the rail yards leading into the station and the many blocks of viaducts and bridges that separated trains from other traffic. The library adds that, unlike earlier terminals, the entrances were designed for car traffic, with places for drivers to pull up at the curb.

The head house takes up an entire block. It is Beaux-Arts in style and clad in Bedford limestone from Indiana. The American Planning Association says the name of the former owner, the Chicago Union Station Co., is etched on the windows of the Canal Street colonnade. The APA also describes Union Station as the first and only double stub-end station in the country, where trains enter and leave from separate sides.

The Great Hall

The hall is the heart of the building. The station's own history describes the main waiting room as spanned by a 219-foot barrel-vaulted skylight that soars 115 feet above the floor. The American Planning Association lists Corinthian columns, Tennessee marble floors and brass lamps. The Architecture Center adds that long oak benches, and light fixtures and chandeliers decorated with birds, bees, butterflies and flowers, are original.

Two statues by Henry Hering stand on the east wall and represent day and night, a nod to trains running at all hours. The APA says one holds a rooster and the other an owl. The Chicago Tribune, quoted by the library, wrote in 1925 that "in respect to both architecture and utility, the new station is one of the most impressive in the world."

At opening the station also held a hospital, a chapel and a jail cell, the library says. The Architecture Center lists a small jail for transported prisoners, a Victorian-era women's lounge, a nursery and a first aid station. Fred Harvey's lunchroom and restaurant was a highlight of the new building, the library notes.

Passengers waiting in the main hall, July 1974. U.S. National Archives (NARA). Photo: Jim Pickerell. Source. Public domain. Resized.

Decline and change

Rail travel fell after its peak and the station lost parts of itself. The APA says the "L" station was removed in 1958 and the Concourse Building was demolished in 1969. The Chicago Daily News and Post Office buildings were built over the station's air rights to the north and south. Two long-closed historic restaurants, the Fred Harvey Coffee Shop and the Gold Lion, were destroyed when a fire swept through that part of the station in 1980, according to the Architecture Center.

Amtrak assumed full ownership of the station in 1984. A five-year, $32 million renovation that included new escalators and a redesigned food court was finished in 1992, the APA says.

A long restoration

The Architecture Center says Amtrak has overseen a renovation effort that began in 2010, guided by CBRE and the Chicago architects Goettsch Partners. The first steps were basic infrastructure, including a heat pump, sprinklers and electrical transformers. After being without air conditioning since the 1960s, the Great Hall was cooled again in 2011.

The Great Hall skylight was blacked out during World War II for security, and it was extensively restored in 2018 at a cost of $22 million, the Architecture Center says. One visible change was replacing the travertine on the staircases leading down from Canal Street. Decades of footsteps had worn parts of the stairs to half of their original three-inch thickness. The former Women's Lounge and Men's Barber Shop were also restored.

Goettsch Partners' list of recognition for the work includes the 2020 Crombie Taylor Award from the American Institute of Architects, Illinois Chapter, and a 2021 Landmarks Illinois Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award. The station was named a Chicago Landmark in 2002, and the American Planning Association named it one of America's Great Places in 2012.

A column capital on Canal Street. Photo: Chicago Architecture Today. Source. CC BY 2.0. Resized.

Still busy

The Architecture Center says Union Station remains so busy that it handles more passengers each year than Midway Airport, with about 3 million Amtrak passengers a year and over 100,000 Metra commuters a day. Movies have used it too. The Chicago Public Library lists The Sting (1973), The Blues Brothers (1980), The Untouchables (1987), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) and Flags of Our Fathers (2006).

The station is open seven days a week and, according to its website, closes daily between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.

Who owns Chicago Union Station today?

Amtrak owns Chicago Union Station. The station's fact sheet says so, and Metra's own 100th-anniversary page credits Amtrak as the owner. Metra, which runs commuter trains from six of its eleven lines out of the station, uses it under an agreement with Amtrak rather than owning it. That relationship has been contested. In 2019 Amtrak asked the federal Surface Transportation Board to settle what Metra pays for access after a 1984 lease expired, and in 2021 the two railroads were still arguing over who should control station operations. Food court operators such as Chick-fil-A are tenants. Read October 27, 2026.

Where can you eat or drink at Chicago Union Station?

The station has a food court, and its retail page lists Pret A Manger and Auntie Anne's there. Chick-fil-A's own website lists its Chicago Union Station restaurant at 225 S. Canal Street, phone 312-526-3743, open Monday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and closed Sunday. The station's own directory shows different hours for some food court tenants, and the Pret and Auntie Anne's own sites did not show hours for these locations, so check with each before you go. The Junction, a sports bar in the station, appears in the station directory with hours that do not fit the station's nightly 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. closure, so confirm its hours too. Chick-fil-A's hours were read on October 27, 2026; confirm before visiting.