The 37 Most Beautiful Train Stations in the World (Part 2)

🌼Union Station

This Beaux Arts wonder, completed in 1907, was was the first major structure in the country to be built of Bethel, Vermont, white granite, a stone prized for its strength and brightness. The station brought Washington, D.C.’s two rail hubs under one roof, allowing the railroads to dismantle central trackwork and create the National Mall.

The station itself, designed by architect Daniel H. Burnham, features a stunning coffered plaster ceiling and draws inspiration from classical elements such as Rome’s Arch of Constantine (reflected in the main façade) and Baths of Diocletian (seen in the vaulted interiors). Surface embellishments make liberal use of marble, gold leaf, and mahogany.

🌼CFM Railway Station

The bronze dome of Maputo, Mozambique’s central rail station cuts an impressive silhouette against the uncluttered skyline that surrounds it. A high-water mark of Portuguese colonial architecture—built by Alfredo Augusto Lisboa de Lima, Mário Veiga, and Ferreira da Costa and completed in 1916—the station overlooks Praça dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Square). The modestly handsome structure features a mint-green-and-white exterior, wrought-iron latticework, and a display of antique steam locomotives.

🌼King’s Cross Station

The historic section of King’s Cross Station in London was designed by architect Lewis Cubitt and completed in 1852. At the time, its two train sheds’ glass roofs were considered cutting-edge, although their laminated-timber beams were replaced with steel girders, and their two platforms and 14 tracks quickly fell short of demand. A new edge has been honed with a 15-year, $650-million renovation project that has as its most prominent feature this new concourse designed by John McAslan. Covering a new ticket hall and pedestrian thoroughfare, the enormous single-span structure, a sweeping steel grid that looks a bit like a bisected funnel, opened in time for the 2012 Olympics.

🌼Estación de Atocha

The original 1851 Atocha station was mostly destroyed by fire and was replaced in 1892 with a shed that features a soaring wrought-iron-and-glass inverted-hull roof (almost 90 feet high) connecting two brick flanks. The architect for the project, Alberto de Palacio Elissagne, also built palaces and bridges, and on this project collaborated with Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, who had just finished his eponymous Parisian tower. Atocha continues to serve as Spain’s largest train station, but in 1992 its main hall was transformed into a shopping mall centered by a one-acre tropical garden.

🌼Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus

Formerly known as Victoria Terminus Station, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai, India is a mash-up of Victorian Italianate Gothic Revival and traditional Indian architecture. Designed to serve the country’s leading mercantile port and completed in 1888, the station took ten years to build, with tremendous labor involved in executing architect F. W. Stevens’s plan for decorative stone carvings and statuary of local flora and fauna, gargoyles, allegorical grotesques, and busts representing the country’s castes and communities.

🌼São Bento Railway Station

Architect José Marques da Silva turned to 19th-century Paris for inspiration when he designed the stone façade and mansard roof of Porto, Portugal station, which opened in 1916 in Portugal’s second largest city. São Bento Railway Station, Porto, Portugal The station’s centerpiece was created by the painter and native son Jorge Colaço, who covered the atrium walls with scenes from Portugal’s history. Although Colaço often worked on canvas, the technique used here enlisted 20,000 tin-glazed ceramic tiles. It took the artist 11 years to complete the murals.

🌼Grand Central Terminal

The original Grand Central was built by transportation magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1871, but that building was demolished in 1903. The current iteration, completed in 1913, continues to be a jewel in New York’s architectural crown. Its vast concourse is distinguished by elegant marble staircases at either end and a four-faced milk-glass-and-brass clock above its central information booth; the painted zodiac constellations on its cavernous domed ceiling, meanwhile, were almost completely obscured by cigarette-smoke damage until a 1998 restoration.

Other highlights of the terminal include the Tiffany clock on its 42nd Street façade and the landmark subterranean Oyster Bar restaurant, which features a serpentine lunch counter, a whispering gallery in its entryway arch, and terra-cotta Guastavino tiles lining its vaulted ceiling.

🌼Amsterdam Centraal Station

Amsterdam’s neo-Renaissance station is the largest railway station in the European Union, serving over 260,000 passengers each day, having opened to the public in 1889. Designed by Dutch architect Pierre Cuypers, the Gothic-style terminal features a cast-iron platform room.

🌼Napoli Afragola Station

Just over seven miles north of Naples, the Zaha Hadid Architects-Napoli Afragola Station opened in June of 2017 as a solution to the increase in demand for train travel throughout the small European country. The train station boasts the British-Iranian architect’s highly modern—almost futuristic—look, with an enormous elevated concourse comprised of exposed steel bones and a glazed roof. From afar, however, the young train station looks like a bright white abstract wave-like shape among a completely beige landscape. Surely, that was the architect’s intention.

🌼Hua Hin Train Station

In Hua Hin, Thailand, the Hua Hin train station is one of the country’s oldest railway hubs. Built in a traditional Thai architectural style, perhaps the small station’s most striking space is the Royal Waiting Room, erected in 1911 during the reign of King Rama. However, it’s been knocked down and rebuilt more than a few times. The original station building was erected a year earlier in 1910 and later rebuilt in 1926 by Prince Purachatra Jayakara, who wanted a more Victorian feel for the petite structure. And in 1967, Colonel Saeng Chulacharit planned for a relocation of the Sanam Chandra Palace Railway pavilion to what is currently in Hua Hin.

🌼Helsinki Central Station

In the capital of Finland, the Helsinki Central Station is one of the city’s most widely recognized landmarks. The one standing today, an Art Deco-looking structure with a curved grand entrance, replaced the city’s first railway station, which was built in 1860 and ran between Helsinki and Hämeenlinna. Though the new one was met with instant popularity, it was off to a rocky start because Carl Albert Edelfelt’s (the original architect) structure was too small, so the government organized a contest to replace him. After receiving 21 entries, Eliel Saarinen won the coveted role as the railway station’s new designer. His new creation was finished in 1909, and the station opened 10 years later.

🌼Gare do Oriente

Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who also created the Olympic Sports Complex of Athens, the Milwaukee Art Musem, and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan, Gare do Oriente in Lisbon opened in 1998. Though modern at first glance, the new station subtly references the Gothic style that reigned in Europe between the late 12th and 16th centuries. The lattice structure that seemingly hovers over the terminal and galleries beneath, however, is Gare do Oriente’s most recognizable feature.

🌼Union Station

Designed as a reactionary response to the second great Kansas City flood, which completely consumed the original Union Depot railroad station, rail executives quickly decided to build a new train station, but on higher ground this time. The result? Union Station, the brainchild of Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt, who took on the project in 1906. Eight years later, the new station opened to the public and was met with instant admiration.

That said, the station is famous for a few reasons other than its success, one of which is The Union Station Massacre of 1933, when convicted mobster Frank Nash was unexpectedly shot and killed outside the station during what turned out to be a shootout. Nash and four police officers were killed. Those who frequent the train station today claim they can see the scars on the station’s facade from the bullets.

🌼Gare de Metz

Serving the city of Metz, the capital of Lorraine, France, Gare de Metz is often referred to by locals as the Station Palace because, if you look in the right place, you can see the former apartments of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. Built during the first annexation of Metz into the German Empire, the station boasts an undeniably German look. That’s because it was designed by German architect Jürgen Kröger. He spent three years building the neo-Romanesque building that still houses the original departure hall, honorary lounge, and former station restaurant.

🌼Jungfraujoch Station

Jungfraujoch Station, 3,500 meters above sea level, is a mountain railway station in the Bernese Alps—specifically Fieschertal, Switzerland. After decades of trying to figure out how to inaugurate a railway station so high up, a final plan was put forward in 1893 by Adolf Guyer-Zeller, an industrialist and railway expert from Zürich. It wasn’t built, though, until 1930.

🌼 William H. Gray III 30th Street Station

As is the case with many train stations built during the Art Deco period of the 1920s and 30s, the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station in Philadelphia replaced a small station that couldn’t support the city’s growing population. With soaring porticoes, a massive concourse, and museum-quality works of art, the Alfred Shaw-designed eight-story building has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since the late 1970s. Designed in the elegant Neoclassical style, the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station is one of the most architecturally opulent structures in the entire city.

🌼Strasbourg-Ville

It may not be in Paris, but the Strasbourg-Ville station, which opened in 1841 and was rebuilt about 40 years later, is one of the busiest in France. German architect Johann Eduard Jacobsthal designed the bulk of the late 19th-century station, but the building’s most famous section, the Salon de l’Empereur, which was added in 1900, was the work of another German architect, Hermann Eggert, who designed the nearby Palais du Rhin. The station was refurbished by French architect Jean-Marie Duthilleul between in 2006 and 2007. Though much of the renovation consisted of restoring the original architects’ work, Duthilleul added the iconic glass roof that covers the entire historical façade.

🌼Union Station

Cities in Colorado—especially Denver—are most famous for their enormous role in the Gold and Silver Rushes of the 19th century, but the mountainous state is also home to a collection of architecturally historical buildings that serve as landmarks today. One such structure is Union Station, which burned down only three years after it was built in 1881. Luckily, it was quickly rebuilt, and the new one was 40 feet taller. That one didn’t make it either; it was too small to accommodate the city’s growth, so it was demolished. The one that took its place, the current Union Station, is a Beaux Arts and Renaissance Revival–style building made of carved granite and terra-cotta. This one opened to travelers in 1914 and is one of the city’s most cherished buildings.

🌼St. Pancras International

London is rife with train stations, but some, like St. Pancras International, are more beautiful than others. Originally opened during the height of the Victorian era in 1868, the station is largely considered one of the most elegant stations in the world. Designed by William Henry Barlow and built by the Midland Railway Company, who infused the station with Gothic moments throughout, St. Pancras International served as the main line into London from neighboring cities. And with all of the travel into the city, the M.R. constructed the Midland Grand Hotel right on the station’s façade. Not only does it still operate as a hotel, but it’s a Grade I-listed building.

🌼Wemyss Bay

Tucked within its namesake village near the coast of Scotland, Wemyss Bay railway station was designed by James Miller and opened in 1865. However, it was completely rebuilt in 1903 to accommodate the growing number of travelers. Unlike the original, the new Wemyss Bay station is outfitted with a series of curved corridors to ease the flow of travelers, minimizing their need to make sharp, hard turns.

🌼King Street Station

The architects behind Seattle’s King Street Station know a thing or two about beautiful railway hubs. St. Paul, Minnesota–based Reed and Stem were the associate architects behind the design of one of America’s most famous train stations, Grand Central Terminal. When it came to King Street Station, however, they took the lead on the design. Wanting to create something that felt unexpected and different for Seattle, the architects designed the 242-foot-tall tower to mimic the fallen Campanile di San Marco in Venice, Italy and filled it with four gargantuan clockfaces from Boston’s E. Howard & Co.

🌼Toledo Metro Station

In the early 2000s, Neapolitan subway stations underwent a prestigious makeover, courtesy of internationally renowned architects. One of them, the Toledo metro station, was designed by Spanish architect Oscar Tusquets, whose inspiration came from earth, water, and light. The new station, which debuted in 2012, is a spectacular display of intricate mosaics.

🌼Union Terminal

A National Historic Landmark in Cincinnati, the Union Terminal is an Art Deco masterpiece that opened in 1933, a time when the end of the railroad era seemed near. After all, car ownership was massively up throughout the 1920s and ’30s, making people think rail was relatively over. Of course, that never happened, and the new terminal thrived, even during the Depression years.

The impressive station was the work of Roland Wank, of New York firm Fellheimer and Wagner and Philadelphia-based architect Paul Philippe Cret, who spent four years designing and building the beloved structure.

Cre: cntraveller

Đăng bởi: Sông Lam