From Brand New to Run Down to Brand re-New

The train pictured on the front of this post card is leaving the new Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. This website gives the history of the station from the railroad perspective: https://www.american-rails.com/kcus.html Kansas City, which laid some 250 miles away from St. Louis, across the state of Missouri, was situated at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. It was originally established on June 1, 1850 as the town of Kansas during efforts to settle the West and later renamed Kansas City. Following the Civil War the United States government expedited this process by funding the Transcontinental Railroad to push economic growth far beyond the Mississippi River. One federally chartered line, which eventually became the Kansas Pacific Railway, was the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western of 1855. The railroad began construction from Kansas City in 1863 and extended to Lawrence by 1864. In August of 1870 the road reached Denver and was acquired by Union Pacific in 1874. From the east the first line to reach Kansas City was the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, which opened a branch there on July 3, 1869. In the succeeding years more and more railroads reached KC, which established itself as the dominant center of trade in the region and became somewhat similar to St. Louis in this regard. With a growing city it was clear a centralized rail terminal was needed and Union Depot opened on April 8, 1878 between Union Avenue and present-day West Bottoms near the riverfront. It was designed partially in the Gothic Revival style by lead architect Asa Beebe Cross. While a beautiful structure with a central clock tower, arched windows, and dormers of various size, alas, after just two decades of service it proved inadequate and was prone to flooding (there also lacked enough room for needed expansion). And so, as early as 1903 plans were drawn up for a new terminal. As railroads and the city worked out the details the former established the jointly-owned Kansas City Terminal Railway for the purpose of operating the new facility. There were a dozen railroads involved in the project including: St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco), Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (Santa Fe), Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (Burlington Route), Milwaukee Road, Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific (Rock Island), Union Pacific, Chicago Great Western, Alton Railroad (later owned by the Baltimore & Ohio and then sold to Gulf, Mobile & Ohio), Kansas City Southern, Missouri Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy)and the Wabash. The city sought a terminal that rivaled those in New York and hired architect Jarvis Hunt to design a magnificent facility. Hunt was already known for his work having conceived recently-built 16th Street Station in Oakland and Joliet Union Station in Illinois. All three were dressed in the Beaux-Arts style. Kansas City Union Station employed wide open spaces and ornate decorations on the walls and ceilings including a magnificent clock in the Grand Hall and three huge chandeliers. It took several years but finally opened on October 30, 1914 after eight years of construction, then the second largest in the country. The facility was also designed to handle the city's streetcar and interurban traffic. Despite being opened during the heyday of rail travel the terminal's peak passenger traffic did not occur until 1945 when it witnessed nearly 680,000 travelers pass through its doors! This website gives the history from today’s perspective. http://news.visitkc.com/facts/union-station#:~:text=HISTORY%3A%20Design%20for%20Union%20Station%20began%20in%201906.,the%20Station%20just%20after%20midnight%20on%20Nov.%201. Design for Union Station began in 1906. By the time the Station opened to the public in 1914, the construction cost had topped $6 million. Its first arrival, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Flyer, pulled into the pulled into the Station just after midnight on Nov. 1. Railway use peaked during World War I, with Union Station witnessing the arrivals and departures of more than 79,000 trains. Passenger traffic began to decline during the '50s and '60s as the airline industry gained momentum. In 1985, Amtrak discontinued its Union Station service. Passed by voters in 1996, a bi-state cultural sales tax—the first of its kind in the country—funded nearly half of the Station’s $250 million renovation. The remaining money was raised through private donations and federal funding. The fully-restored Station reopened to the public in 1999 with new shops, restaurants, theaters and a science center. Amtrak returned to Union Station in December 2002, offering several daily departures. The organization that operates Union Station is a non-profit organization, Union Station is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

The post card was published by Max Bernstein from Kansas City, Missouri. He was a publisher of lithographic postcards from the divided back era to the linens. Most of these cards depicted views and events of the American mid-West though other types of cards were produced as well such as Judaica. Many of Bernstein’s cards were printed by Curt Teich. His company was around from 1916 (two years after this Union Station opened) to 1932.