Distorted iPhone panorama of the Denver Union Station train shed.
Denver Union Station — Beaux-Arts Architecture, LoDo, Colorado
I discovered Denver's Union Station during a train trip I took for a pizza run between California and Chicago back in 2021. Well, it wasn't so much a "pizza run" as it was a Chicago pizza crawl. I now call it Pixxapocalypse '21.I didn't bring any back home. I ate it all there. I had flown into Chicago a few days earlier for a planned visit to several Chicago icons, including the Art Institute, the Adler Planetarium [first in the U.S.!), my old stomping grounds at the University of Chicago, and an unplanned swim in Lake Michigan. And pizza. It was a blast. I traveled light, carrying only an iPhone; after all, this was a scouting and eating trip. In the space of two days, I hit four serious pizza joints and crowned a new one king—Pequod's. And then I prepared to take the train home.
The California Zephyr makes a generous stop in Denver — long enough to step off the train, get your land legs back, and take stock of where you are. Where I was happened to be one of the better pieces of civic architecture in the American West: the 1914 Beaux-Arts terminal designed by Denver architects Gove & Walsh, sitting at the edge of Lower Downtown like a building that knows its own value and is comfortable waiting for the city to remember it.
The "TRAVEL BY TRAIN" neon sign was added in 1952, when that phrase still required no nostalgia. It fills the archway above the Great Hall with red light, and by the time I arrived it had outlasted the era it was meant to advertise and become something more interesting — an artifact that earned its irony by surviving long enough to stop being ironic. By 2021, the building had been through its second life: the 2014 renovation that converted the Great Hall from a functional waiting room into Denver's self-described living room. The Crawford Hotel now occupies the upper floors. Terminal Bar runs the length of one wall. Mercantile Dining & Provision anchors the far end. Amtrak and the light rail still run from the platforms behind beneath the sweeping train shed designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
When we pulled into Denver's Union Station, I had no idea what was waiting at the train shed. I was floored by the beauty and audacity of the design, its sweeping lines, its gleam in the bright morning light. I had a camera. I used it. The image I made that morning was not the one I planned when I flew out of California; I was going to Chicago for the deep dish, and to do a little casual scouting. Denver architecture was not on the itinerary. But that is how the best images tend to arrive: sideways, while you are on your way to something else. You are moving through a place with no particular agenda, and the place decides to show you something. That something can be seen in the image at the top of this post, an iPhone panorama that only hinted at the marvelous possibilities.
I would return here during my EV cross-continent road trip in 2022 with a more serious rig, to study and capture this beast at night. That image is below.
Provenance: Phase One XT IQ4.150 • Rodenstock 32mm
Related Posts
For the other great American train station on that same trip —Union Station, Chicago, a field report from the same journey.
From the city in which I started, in a different kind of light — Batman Meets Ingmar Bergman, Chicago in the haze of afternoon.
And the Chicago River at the opposite end of the day —Occidens, Chicago's second tallest skyscraper facing into the west.
Fine Art Architecture Photography Print
Denver Union Station — the sweeping train shed roof, "TRAVEL BY TRAIN" neon sign, Great Hall, LoDo, Colorado. Completed 1914, renovated 2014.
