Union Station

2 March 1911: The Houston Belt & Terminal Railway constructed Union Station between 1906 and 1911 at 501 Crawford between Texas and Prairie. Prior to construction 12 square blocks were demolished down to the ground, including the home at 403 Crawford of Horace Baldwin Rice (1861-1929), current and former mayor of Houston 1896-1898 and 1905-1913, and Adath Yeshurun Synagogue at Preston and Hamilton. In keeping with its importance to the city, the façade of Union Station was quite impressive. The limestone base is surmounted by a red brick attic floor and a wide bracketed cornice. A three-bay Doric portico comprises the front entrance opening into a porte-cochere with vaulted ceiling of Guastavino tile, a patented system of vaulting. Interior waiting rooms are similarly vaulted, and behind the station for two blocks covered platforms protected boarding and arriving passengers. Freight yards occupied five blocks to the north of Union Station from Crawford to St. Emanuel. The postcard image here must have been taken after 2 March 1911 when it opened and before 1912 when the two extra floors were added for office space.

13 August 2012: Trains service to Union Station was discontinued in 1974, and for years afterwards the site lay mostly idle. In 1995 plans began for a downtown baseball stadium for the Houston Astros, and ground was broken on Oct 30, 1997. Enron Field opened on 7 April 2000, but when Enron Corporation failed spectacularly in 2001, new naming contracts were required which eventually went to Minute Maid, a Coca Cola Subsidiary, and the stadium became Minute Maid Park. Behind the Union Station building the retractable domed stadium looms over its old companion.