All Aboard! FIRST STREET AND MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE NE WHEN IT OPENED IN 1907, Union Station was the world’s largest railroad terminal. Architect Daniel Burnham’s Beaux-Arts masterpiece, with its soaring, elegant, and ligh t- lled interiors, was th e fir st of the series of Classical buildings demonstrating the sophistication and power of the Nation’s Capital. e station’s name refers to the “union” of two competing railroad depots: the Baltimore & Ohio’s on New Jersey Avenue, NW, and the Pennsylvania’s, which occupied 14 acres of the National Mall . e merger made train travel more convenient. It removed commerce from the Mall and eliminated the danger of tracks crossing city streets. Union Station and the railroads have employed thousands, many of whom lived nearby. For a white male immigrant of the early 1900s, a railroad job meant security for his family and, o en, economic progress. For African American men the job of porter on a Pullman Company luxury rail car was among the best available. In 1925, A. Philip Randolph founded a pioneering black union, International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. DC’s station porters, or Red Caps, were the nation’ s r st to organize a local union, the Washington Terminal Brother- hood of Station Porters. Inside the station you can see a memorial to Randolph, also an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. e City Pos t Oce , designed to match Union Station, opened next door in 191 4. e Post Oce (sin ce reborn as the National Postal Museum) replaced Capitol Park (a.k.a. Swampoodle Grounds), where th e fir st baseball team known as the Washington Nationals played beginning in 1886.
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