Congress approved the union terminal site on the north side of Massachusetts Avenue, with D.H. Burnham & Co. as the building’s architects. Burnham and chief designer Peirce Anderson employed the elegant Beaux-Arts style and drew on Rome’s Baths of Diocletian and Triumph arches for the building’s inspiration. The glorious result helped set the tone for Washington’s monumental architecture for the next forty years.
February 28, 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt signs into law a measure “to provide for a Union Station in the District of Columbia.”
October, 1903-1908 Union Station construction begins. Washington Terminal RR (Washington Terminal company) created as the joint but independent Company to build and operate the station by its owners the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The Washington Terminal company would provide switching services for B&O and PRR and tenants from the south (Chesapeake & Ohio, RF&P, Southern, Atlantic Coast Line, and Seaboard). Many at-grade crossings eliminated from the Virginia Ave mainline with new elevated trackage.