King Street Station

Built between 1904 and 1906 by the Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railway, the station replaced an antiquated station on Railroad Avenue, today's Alaskan Way. Designed by the firm of Reed and Stem of St. Paul, Minnesota, who acted as associate architects for the design of Grand Central Terminal in New York City, the station was part of a larger project that moved the mainline away from the waterfront and into the planned Great Northern Tunnel under downtown.[3][4] The depot's 242-foot (74 m) tower was modeled after the recently collapsed Campanile di San Marco in Venice, Italy,[5] making it the tallest building in Seattle at the time of its construction. This tower contained four huge mechanical clock faces built by E. Howard & Co. of Boston, Massachusetts, offering the time to each of the four cardinal directions. At the time of installation it was said to be the second largest timepiece on the Pacific Coast, second only to the Ferry Building in San Francisco, California.[6] Later, this tower also served as a microwave tower for the Burlington Northern Railroad, the successor of both the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways, whose offices occupied the second and third floors of the station. King Street Station was Seattle's primary train terminal until the construction of the adjacent Oregon & Washington Depot, later named Union Station, in 1911; the 1912 Baist's Real Estate Atlas of Seattle still refers to King Street Station as "Union Passenger Depot".

After the end of World War II, as passenger rail travel began to decline across the United States, steps were taken to gradually modernize King Street Station. The ticket counters, once located directly to the east of the compass room, were expanded outward into the waiting room. In the late 1940s a set of "electric stairs" and a new side entrance to the second floor railroad offices were built over the open stairwell to Jackson Street, narrowing them by half.[7] Over the next two decades, as train ridership and the station's number of employees dwindled, the station was further remodeled to reduce maintenance and heating costs. In the late 1950s the station's original high-back benches, made of yellow oak, were replaced by modern chrome and plastic seats.[8] The final blow to the station's character occurred in late 1967 when, under the direction of Northern Pacific architect A.C. Cayou, a new drop ceiling of plastic and metal was installed in the waiting room ten feet below the original, concealing the hand-carved coffered ceiling to just below the balcony and second level arcade. Hundreds of holes had to be punched through the plaster to attach the ceiling's support wires to the steel frame of the building. The new ceiling held new fluorescent lights and heat lamps, replacing the original brass chandeliers and sconces. Below the new ceiling, plaster reliefs, marble panels, glass tile mosaics and other original fixtures were sheared from the walls and replaced with sheet rock and Formica paneling.[9] The dedicated women's waiting room at the southwest corner of the building was converted into employee offices; its own architectural details suffering the same damage. The only original remaining features left visible in the main waiting area were the terrazzo tile floor and the clock on the west wall above the restrooms.

Despite the attempted modernization, the station continued to deteriorate. Following the creation of Amtrak in 1971 to take over the money-losing passenger service from the railroad companies, hundreds of routes were eliminated and service across the country was cut in half.[10] Amtrak consolidated all of its Seattle service at King Street Station, resulting in the closure of Union Station, which formerly served Union Pacific (the Milwaukee Road had moved out a decade earlier). To further cut costs the station's restaurant, lunch counter, and gift shop were immediately closed and vending machines installed.[11] Eventually even the escalators stopped running and without the funds or passenger volume to justify repairing them, were permanently walled off.

Today, the station has been fully restored and is part of a group of transportation facilities in the southern portion of Downtown Seattle. King Street Station is located a block away from the International District/Chinatown station of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel serving the Link Light Rail Central Link route, many King County Metro and Sound Transit Express bus routes serve the area, and the First Hill line of the Seattle Streetcar network stops nearby. After many years, the original upper entrance off of Jackson Street has been reopened. The station entrance located on the first floor off King Street now also has a passenger drop-off loop for vehicles, instead of a small parking lot.

King Street Station is a red brick masonry and steel frame building with terra cotta and cast stone ornamentation, through relatively subdued in comparison to the clock tower. The entire first floor exterior is brick-clad with granite. The building is L-shaped with the clock tower marking the main entry on the west facade.[5] The clock tower and main entry terminate the axis of King Street in Pioneer Square. The architectural style is sometimes denoted as "Railroad Italianate" with definite Italian inspirations on the interior and in the clock tower while the base shows influences of Beaux Arts.[23]

Inside the main entry, at the base of the clock tower, is the entry hall, known as the Compass Room. The name references the navigational star compass rose design laid out in hand-cut marble tiles on the floor at its center.[12] The Compass Room has marble wainscotting, and is lighted by a multi-globe chandelier suspended above the compass rose from an elaborate plaster rosette. Triple-globe wall sconces around the perimeter illuminate a band of inlaid green iridescent glass tile on the walls. Circular clerestory windows are trimmed in plaster relief decoration. This motif was originally repeated throughout most of the station's waiting room. While there is no known influence for the design of the interior, it resembles the ceiling of the famous Salone dei Cinquecento at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy featuring a similar coffered grid with dentils and repeating circles, while the terrazzo floor features Greek-influenced meander patterns.

Currently King St. Station has 25 daily train departures:

• Thirteen Sounder commuter rail trains south to Tacoma with eight trains continuing south to Lakewood (weekdays only)
• Four Sounder commuter rail trains north to Everett (weekdays only)
• Two Amtrak Cascades regional trains north to Vancouver, BC
• Four Amtrak Cascades regional trains south to Portland, OR with one train continuing south to Eugene, OR
• One Amtrak Empire Builder long-distance train east to Chicago, IL
• One Amtrak Coast Starlight long-distance train south to Los Angeles, CA

• 
  View of suspended ceiling, now removed
• 
  King Street Station and Union Station, 1913
• 
  A Sounder train at the station
• 
  An Amtrak Cascades train in King Street Station
• 
  King Street Station rehab
• 
  Remodeled interior of King Street Station
• 
  View of the platforms from the southwest

• Pioneer Square National Historic District
• Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park
• International District
• Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel
• CenturyLink Field
• T-Mobile Park (formerly Safeco Field)
• Union Station
• International District/Chinatown station

Wikimedia Commons has media related to King Street Station (Seattle).

• Seattle, WA – Amtrak
• King Street Station (National Register of Historic Places)
• King Street Station (City of Seattle, Department of Transportation)
• King Street Station (Sound Transit)
• King Street Station (Washington State Department of Transportation)
• Seattle, WA (SEA) (Amtrak's Great American Stations)
• Article from Railroad Gazette (1904) showing original floor plan