Burlington Union Station is a train station and office building located in downtown Burlington, Vermont, United States. It is the northern terminal of the Amtrak Ethan Allen Express service. A single side platform on the west side of the station serves Vermont Railway excursion trains and Amtrak trains. The symmetrical Beaux Arts building, built of buff brick with limestone and granite trim, has a central pilaster over two entrances. The main building is divided for use by a variety of tenants.
Rail service to Burlington began in December 1849 with the completion of the Rutland and Burlington Railroad (which later became the Rutland Railroad) and the Vermont Central Railroad (VC). The VC replaced its original station by 1853; it constructed a new line into Burlington in 1861, with a temporary station on the waterfront. It built a permanent station with an arched trainshed in 1866–67. This became a union station in 1871 when the VC leased the Rutland. After local advocacy for a new station, an expansion was built in 1895–96. The Rutland became independent again in 1898 and soon constructed an extension northwards from Burlington.
Planning for a new union station began in 1909, but the railroads and the city struggled to reach an agreement about whether to eliminate grade crossings. After years of discussion and a legal battle about one design, a design with at-grade tracks was approved in 1914. Construction began that November, and the new Union Station opened on January 23, 1916. Passenger service began to decline shortly afterwards; the CV replaced most shuttle trains to Burlington with buses in 1932, and ended its rail service to the station in 1938. Rutland service to Burlington, including the Green Mountain Flyer, lasted until 1953. The building was sold to Green Mountain Power in 1955 and renovated for use as offices.
After the Rutland attempted to abandon its system, most lines were taken over by Vermont Railway in 1964. It soon began operating excursion trains from Burlington. Union Station was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 as a contributing property to the Battery Street Historic District. It was purchased by a private developer in 1985. After a failed attempt that year, a waterfront development was built in the 1990s, with Union Station renovated and an addition built. It served as the terminal of Champlain Flyer commuter service from 2000 to 2003. Construction of a new platform for Amtrak service took place from 2020 to 2022, and Ethan Allen Express service began on July 29, 2022.
Station design
Union Station is located at the west end of Main Street in downtown Burlington near the Lake Champlain waterfront. It is built into a hillside, with two stories aboveground plus a basement level accessed from the west side. It is 5 by 13 bays – approximately – oriented north-south, with the bays defined by pilasters. The symmetrical Beaux Arts building is built of buff brick with limestone and granite trim. It has a hip roof with a central flat section; on the Main Street side, a pediment with tops the three central bays. The central bay has ornamental grillwork and a large clock; the flanking bays have carvings of Mercury and the entrance doors.
When the station was originally opened, those doors led directly into the main waiting room, which was finished with white oak and Vermont marble. The ticket office was between the doors. The baggage office and women's waiting room were at the north side of the station, with the main baggage room below. At the south end was the station restaurant, with the express office and mail room below. Two island platforms serving four passenger tracks were located on the west side of the station, with freight bypass tracks to their west. An enclosed footbridge ran west from the waiting room, with stairs down to the covered platforms.
The Union Station building is owned by Main Street Landing Company. It has been substantially renovated since its use as a station; the main floors are subdivided for use by tenants including art studios and other businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the Vermont Agency of Transportation. The original platforms and footbridge are no longer extant; a semicircular addition is located on the rear of the basement level, with a plaza on its roof. The modern Amtrak platform is a single side platform serving the single track, with the Island Line Trail on the west side of the track. The station is the junction of the New England Central Railroad Burlington Subdivision (Winooski Branch) and the Vermont Railway Northern Subdivision. The dock for the Burlington - Port Kent Ferry is on King Street about southwest of Union Station, while several Green Mountain Transit bus routes stop on nearby streets.
Four steel statues of winged monkeys sit on the roof of Union Station. Two were originally commissioned in 1976 for a local waterbed store, named "Emerald City" after the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz. They were purchased by Main Street Landing to add "whimsy and fun" to the building and were installed in June 1997. Two "babies" were added in 2004.
History Early stations The Rutland and Burlington Railroad (R&B) opened between Burlington and on December 18, 1849, with regular service beginning December 24. Its Burlington terminal was along the waterfront at the intersection of Water Street (now Battery Street) and South Street (Maple Street). The competing Vermont Central Railroad (VC) was completed between Burlington and on December 25, 1849. The first VC station in Burlington, at St. Paul Street and Maple Street, was converted from an unfinished house.
A track continued through downtown from the VC station to reach the waterfront industries and the Lake Champlain ferries. By 1853, a new VC passenger station was located between College Street and Main Street at Water Street (now Winsooki Avenue) – now the site of Fletcher Free Library. The R&B tracks were extended north along the waterfront in 1850 to connect with the VC. By 1851, connecting railroads allowed Boston and New York City connections from Burlington via both the VC and R&B.
The two railroads quickly developed a bitter rivalry. The Vermont and Canada Railroad (V&C) was chartered in 1845 to connect with both railroads in Burlington and continue north to Canada. The VC leased the V&C in 1849; the V&C was terminated (in violation of its charter) at a connection with the VC at in 1851. To spite the Rutland, the VC and V&C made connections at Burlington and Essex Junction deliberately poor. In May 1861, the VC opened a new route from Winooski to Burlington via the Burlington Tunnel. A temporary depot was placed near College Street on the waterfront, and the old line into Burlington was abandoned. The original station remained extant until at least 1981.
1867 station
Work on a permanent station for the VC, located north of College Street near Lake Street, began in early 1866. The new station was made of brick with a granite foundation. The main structure was long north–south and wide, with an arched train shed covering three tracks. The walls were high, with -square towers for storage and ornamentation at each corner. A -long wing on the west side, with a center section high flanked by two -high towers, housed the waiting rooms and railroad offices. The station was completed in late 1866 or early 1867. The cost was estimated at $50,000 ().
The R&B became the Rutland Railroad in 1867. In December 1870, the VC reached an agreement to lease the Rutland. This took effect on January 8, 1871. On January 13, the Rutland depot was closed, and all Rutland trains began using the VC station. The acquisition of the Rutland and other properties pushed the VC into bankruptcy in 1873; it emerged as the Central Vermont Railroad (CV). By 1875, the former Rutland station was reused as a machine shop.
The Burlington and Lamoille Railroad opened between Burlington and Cambridge Junction via Essex Junction on July 2, 1877. Passenger trains used the CV station in Burlington, while the old Rutland station was leased for use as the railroad's offices and maintenance shops. Passenger trains were rerouted over the CV between Burlington and Essex Junction on June 1, 1880; the corresponding section of the Burlington and Lamoille was quickly abandoned. The CV took control of the Burlington and Lamoille in 1889; it continued to use the former Rutland station as maintenance shops for several years. The building was demolished in August 1897.
In mid-1889, the Burlington Board of Trade began advocating for the construction of a new union depot. The city council passed a resolution supporting the effort in November 1889. In January 1890, the CV presented potential plans to either built a new station or improve the existing one. The original twenty-year lease of the Rutland expired in 1890; after initially making an agreement with the Delaware and Hudson Railroad (D&H), the Rutland signed a renewed lease with the CV. Not until February 1895 did the CV announce plans for a major renovation of the station, with new waiting rooms on the east side of the station and a covered platform for the east track. The work also included replacement of the original brick arches of the trainshed with modern supports, and construction of a spur track for the Burlington Traction Company that allowed streetcars to load from the south portion of the new platform. Construction began on July 3, 1895; the new waiting rooms opened in December, with the platform canopies completed in early 1896.
For a second time, leasing the Rutland bankrupted the CV, and it entered receivership on March 20, 1896. The Rutland was separated on May 7 and entered control of the D&H (which owned the majority of its stock), though it continued to use the CV station in Burlington. A group including William Kissam Vanderbilt, William Seward Webb, and Rutland president Percival W. Clement purchased control of the Rutland Railroad from the D&H effective October 22, 1898, and the railroad became fully independent. The Rutland immediately moved to build the long-planned Rutland–Canadian Railroad (Island Line) between Burlington and Rouses Point, New York, with a branch to Noyan, Quebec. Regular passenger service on the new line began on January 7, 1901. The south portion of the canopy at Burlington station was removed between 1900 and 1906.
Union Station planning The 1867-built station, which had been built by the CV primarily for Essex Junction–Burlington shuttle trains, proved inadequate for the increased traffic of the Rutland and its 1901 extension plus the Burlington and Lamoille. Planning for a new union station began in 1909. In February 1911, the state legislature authorized the state public service commission to select a site and order the railroads to build a new union station. Hearings before the commission began in July 1911. The two railroads disagreed about numerous facets of the project; the CV wanted to elevate the tracks to eliminate several grade crossings, which the Rutland opposed. The commission chairman remarked in August that the results of the proceedings up to that point were "about on par with a man dragging a cat by the tail across a carpet."
The CV presented a revised plan for the station and grade crossing eliminations in September 1911. The CV estimated the cost at $315,000 (equivalent to $ million in )., while the Rutland estimated $250,000 (equivalent to $ million in ). An alternate CV plan with no grade crossing eliminations was presented that December. In February 1912, local engineer Frank O. Sinclair presented a new proposal, created at the request of a city committee. It called for the station building to be on the west side of the tracks at Main Street – rather than the east side as in the CV plans – and for a road overpass to be built.