In Washington, D.C.: Last Stop for Union Station

By Maureen Dowd

There have been two disastrous days in the history of Washington's Union Station. The first was Jan. 15, 1953, when a train hurtled beyond the tracks, through a newsstand and into the main concourse, where it smashed through the concrete floor and landed in the baggage room. Miraculously, no one was killed. The second was Feb. 29,1968, when Congress decided to save the magnificent old building. From this intrusion, Union Station has never recovered.

Today, 20 congressional hearings and $83 million later, the station is closed, too dangerous to use. Parts of the roof have caved in. Leaking water has spread sepia stains on the gilt-edged ceilings and knocked loose hefty chunks of plaster. Pipes have burst, leaving muddy lakes. Toadstools grow from urinals and floors. Beneath 36 granite Roman soldiers encircling the balcony of the musty waiting room, rats and roaches prowl.

To reach their trains, passengers walk a zigzag detour one-third of a mile around the boarded-up building. At the end of this trek is a jerry-built replacement station. "This long walk is for the birds," groused New Yorker Aileen Gravelle, 71, dragging her suitcase along one muggy day. "And it used to be such a lovely station."

Indeed it was. Union Station's architect, Daniel H. Burnham, operated on a simple motto: "Make no little plans." He modeled his beaux-arts palace on Rome's Diocletian Baths and the triumphal Arch of Constantine. When it opened in 1907, luxuriously appointed with mahogany, crystal, brass and marble, its 760-ft.-long, 45-ft.-high concourse was the largest room in the world under a single roof. Niches in the fac,ade held carved avatars of fire, electricity, agriculture and mechanics, each weighing 25 tons.

But by 1960, the falloff in rail travel had turned the white granite building into a mausoleum. The railroads were eager to raze it and put up an office building. There was no longer any need for a station that could support crowds of 175,000, as it had during World War II, or a staff of 5,000 to operate the city within the station: bowling alley, mortuary, bakery, butchery, YMCA hotel, ice house, resident doctor, liquor store, Turkish baths, first-class restaurant, basketball court, swimming pool, nursery, police station and silver-monogramming shop.

Preservationists had the station designated as a national landmark, making it virtually impossible to tear down. So the railroads offered it to the Federal Government. The National Park Service had been hankering for a place to tell tourists about the delights of the capital. It seemed a perfect match. In 1968 Congress enthusiastically passed the National Visitor Center Facilities Act. The bill called for the Department of the Interior to lease the building for $3.5 million annually for 25 years, after which the Government would own it. The owners of the terminal, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore & Ohio railroads, would spend $19 million for a parking garage, replacement terminal and conversion of the station into a visitor center. The bill's sponsor, former Illinois Representative Kenneth Gray, a Democrat known for his dynamic style and patent-leather shoes, assured his colleagues that the annual rent could be recouped from parking fees and concessions.

He was wrong. "We threw away millions," says Interior Official Richard Hite, who helped direct the project. "We screwed up. It's a national disgrace. I'm not saying that anyone acted in bad faith. But so many people being involved made it impossible to manage."

Amid lawsuits, contract disputes and turf battles among the parties involved--Amtrak, the railroads, the architects, the contractor, Congress, the Park Service, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Departments of Interior and Transportation--construction finally began in May 1974. "I'll never forget that day they put the jackhammers in the floor," says Nita Shaw, a secretary at the station for 31 years. "I had to walk over to the Capitol to calm down and stop crying."

President Nixon, eager to have a showcase for the Bicentennial tourists coming to Washington, had ordered the center to be finished for a July 4, 1976, opening. In the rush, planners neglected heating, wiring and plumbing. Work began before the cost estimates and architectural plans were finished. A construction contract was signed that invited cost overruns. The crumbling roof was ignored. "It sounds horrible in retrospect but in the rush we never addressed the problem of the roof," Hite says. "We were going to open that thing willy-nilly." Ironically, the great Bicentennial crowds never materialized.

To make it a complete Washington scandal, there was even a little sex. Or so claimed Elizabeth Ray, the famed blond secretary who could not type. During the congressional sex scandal revelations of 1976, Ray reportedly told federal investigators that her former boss, Kenneth Gray, had arranged for her to sleep with Alaska Senator Mike Gravel on a houseboat outing in August of 1972 in hopes of securing his support for some visitor-center legislation. Gray and Gravel have denied the allegations. Says Gray: "She never had a damn thing to do with the center."

The center featured two 175-seat movie theaters, multilingual information desks, a "First Ladies of America" exhibit, a national bookstore and a Hall of States. Its centerpiece was an 8,000-sq.-ft. sunken area called the "Primary Audio-Visual Experience." Critics soon renamed it "the Pit." At a cost of $1.5 million, the Pit housed a large screen that flashed a nine-minute musical slide show called the "Welcome to Washington Presentation."

"What is the point of looking at slides of the U.S. Capitol when you can walk out the front door and see it?" asked Daniel Moynihan. At one hearing, the Senator from New York drolly asked Hite if the number of people going down in the Pit equaled the number of people coming up. Some joked that the Pit should be turned into a swimming pool or a national aquarium to take advantage of the leaky roof. Virtually ignored by tourists, the Pit closed after two years.

In 1978, with train ridership rebounding as a result of rising gasoline prices and Amtrak's new Northeast-corridor service, the Interior Department agreed to turn the building over to the Department of Transportation, which wanted to turn it back into a train station. By then, however, inertia had set in. Bills to transfer control died in committee. Finally last year, Congress passed a bill, as Moynihan put it, "to return the building to its use before Congress began fumbling with it." It authorizes the Government to spend $69 million more to undo what it did. Another $9 million has been approved for roof repairs. If the rusting parking garage ever opens, each of its 1,200 spaces will have cost an estimated $62,500. But the plan, in keeping with President Reagan's free-market philosophy, depends on getting private developers to invest in the station. The Government hopes to take bids soon from those interested in filling the cavernous station with boutiques, restaurants, offices and hanging plants.

If all goes well, the station will reopen in several years. But no matter how faithful the restoration, the "grand gateway to the capital" will never recapture its past glories. "It was really something," says James ("Doc") Carter, who started as a redcap in 1942. "There were kings and queens and Presidents. When they put that Pit in the ground it was terrible, just like someone running you out of your home." --By Maureen Dowd

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