August 2025.
Toronto’s current Union Station is a wide Beaux-Arts design, one of the best-known and busiest train stations in Canada. Interestingly, it is used more frequently than even Canadian airports. (The US could never.) However, it is the city’s third, and two predecessors just west of the site once served Toronto’s railways.
Union Station is located at 65 Front Street West in downtown Toronto, Ontario. It is bordered by Front Street and the Royal York Hotel to the north, skyscrapers on the Railway Lands to the south, Bay Street and the Dominion Public Building to the east, and York Street and Citigroup Place to the west.
History
Historic photo of the 1858 station. (Wikimedia)
The first Toronto Union Station was built in 1858 by the Grand Trunk Railway as the “New Station.” A union station is one used by multiple railway lines, so it was shared with the Northern and Great Western railways. Its site was infilled on what used to be water at the time and sat southwest of Front and York Streets (currently where the viaduct for the existing Union Station is). The Northern and Great Western lines opened their own stations in the mid-1860s, but continued to use Union Station. The small wooden station was demolished in 1871.
1878 view of the recently completed second station. (Wikimedia)
The second Union Station stood on the same site and opened on July 1, 1873. A temporary station served the railway in the interim. The Second Empire station building was designed by architect Thomas Seaton Scott, with a much larger footprint and three prominent towers. However, it still only served three tracks for a city of 65,000 people. Grand Trunk absorbed several smaller railroads in the following decades, which would then be rerouted to stop at Union Station. Canadian Pacific eventually expanded to Union Station, bringing its total traffic to over 60 trains per day.
The second Union Station after its additions. (Wikimedia)
The second Union Station was expanded beginning in 1892, which added a second train shed immediately south of the first, a seven-story Romanesque Revival office building on Front Street, and an arcade over Station Street, which were designed by Strickland & Symons. The additions opened in 1896. Union Station’s now-sprawling footprint was controversial both functionally and architecturally--one railway magazine of the time wrote that “...Toronto Union is one of the most inconvenient stations in America, expensive to run and unsatisfactory in very many other respects.”
Despite the recently completed additions, it was perceived that a new station was needed by the turn of the 20th century. After the Great Fire of 1904, a large swath of downtown was destroyed, including a block immediately east of the second Union Station. In 1905, planning began on a replacement building, though it sat in limbo for years due to disagreements about the station’s design between the city and the railway. A year later, the Toronto Terminals Railway was established by Grand Trunk and Canadian Pacific to operate the station. The second station remained in use, straining at the seams with 150 trains arriving and 40,000 passengers per day by 1911.
The current Union Station under construction, with the second in the background. (Toronto Then and Now)
Construction on the current Union Station, the third, finally began in September 1914. It was designed by Ross and Macdonald in the Beaux-Arts style. However, due to World War I, it faced labor and material shortages. The Union Station building was completed in 1920, but the tracks and viaduct were not completed until much later after more disputes between the city of Toronto and the Toronto Terminals Railway. Grand Trunk had also gone bankrupt and was assimilated into Canadian National by the Canadian government. Union Station finally opened in August 1927, despite the unfinished nature of the viaduct, a ceremony attended by the Prince of Wales, Duke of Kent, Canadian Prime Minister, and other notable officials. Passengers had to use a temporary wooden bridge that connected to the second Union Station’s platforms in order to board their trains. The tracks were not opened until January 1930 (1-6) and December 1930 (7-12). The plans also included a Central Heating Plant, which was fired by coal and pumped out 150,000 kilograms of steam per hour to heat the station and its various facilities, undoubtedly contributing to some sooty facades over time.
Demolition on the second station began in 1927 after the opening of the third. The only surviving fragments are the tower’s clock faces, which adorn the town hall of the city of Huntsville. The Romanesque Revival office building along Front Street stood until 1931. Its site is occupied by Citigroup Place and 151 Front West today.
Union subway station under construction. (Wikimedia)
Union Station’s first change was not an addition to the building above ground, but an underground subway station. It was the western end of the new Toronto subway and completed in 1954. The station is still in use today, but it has been modified over the years.
By the 1970s, Canada’s railways were in decline. They were facing competition from more modern modes of transportation, such as highways and airports, and with the accompanying losses they began to reduce service. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific abandoned the area known as the “Railway Lands,” at that time a large railway switching yard, in favor of more development. Some projects that took place in the area at that time included the Gardiner Expressway and CN Tower, the latter being built by Canadian National to demonstrate Canada’s industrial power. The two railways proposed a larger “Metro Centre” project, which would have demolished Union Station in favor of a complex of office buildings and a convention center. However, public outcry led to the station being saved. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific ultimately transferred their passenger rail lines to the newly created VIA Rail in 1978. At the same time, it was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1975 and a Heritage Railway Station in 1989.
Union Station’s track layouts were altered further with the construction of the Rogers Centre (1989) and Scotiabank Arena (1999), and the PATH and SkyWalk systems were built to connect the various buildings to each other and downtown Toronto. The city of Toronto purchased the station building in 2000, while GO Transit acquired the train shed and railway lines. Major renovations to the station have taken place since 2010, including new entrances, retail and restaurant space, and concourses.
Photos
Union Station is wide…752 feet long:
It is also a very severe Beaux-Arts building, at least on the exterior. The Union Station I grew up with is in Chicago, and it shares the pared-down classical nature.
I’m assuming “Postal Station” means where the mail was dropped off:
The original north entrances are beneath a tall Tuscan colonnade:
The shafts sit on octagonal pedestals, which is rather unusual. The columns are unfluted and pretty much completely lack decoration aside from a small band of fluting beneath the capital. The entablature above is also very bare, only having small wreaths centered above each column and a band of egg-and-dart below the cornice.
The center of the large colonnade, which now has an outdoor market space out front:
Detail of the carvings above the cornice:
Looking southeast now…much different from the tall glassy skyscrapers that have since taken over the Railway Lands:
**In some of the coming photos, you will notice an orangeish tint. My camera’s light balance at the time was calibrated to a gray card in neon purple lighting for an old photography class project, which I failed to reset afterwards. I only noticed this discrepancy and rectified it months later.
The Great Hall of Union Station is a soaring, vaulted place. It has a dominant cross axis (which this photo looks down), and is very dark with only clerestory windows and the large windows at either end to let in daylight:
The ceiling is coffered:
One of the portals to the various concourses:
This one has a fancy springer and keystone, which are more Renaissance-inspired features.
Niche at the end, with more intricate octagonal coffers and inset rosettes:
I had to speed up the shutter speed a bunch to get a clearer view of the window, but it made everything else darker:
The entablature coursing along the walls features the names of various cities in Canada:
Intricately carved metal portal to one of the wings:
It’s not the same one as above, but another wing has the original pilasters and ceiling:
The smaller height places it accordingly in the building’s hierarchy, but it is still a monumental and brightly lit space. The double pilasters and half-triglyphs are weird, though:
This area just off the one above is more modern, but it has a good classical sensibility through its materials and classical proportions.
Union Station definitely looks the part for Canada’s busiest railway station. It was even how I arrived into the city.
Sources:
https://legacy.trha.ca/1stunionstation.html
https://transittoronto.ca/regional/2302.shtml
https://legacy.trha.ca/2ndunionstation.html
https://torontothenandnow.blogspot.com/2011/03/21-union-station-then-and-now.html
