Terminal Station | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Terminal Station in 1918. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| General information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | 75 Spring Street SW Atlanta,Georgia, United States | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 33°45′11″N84°23′46″W / 33.753°N 84.396°W /33.753; -84.396 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| System | Inter-city rail | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| History | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Opened | May 1905[1] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Closed | June 1970 (demolished 1972)[1] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rebuilt | 1947[2] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Former services | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Terminal Station was the larger of two principaltrain stations indowntownAtlanta,Union Station being the other. Opening in 1905, Terminal Station servedSouthern Railway,Seaboard Air Line,Central of Georgia (including theNancy Hanks toSavannah), and theAtlanta and West Point. Thearchitect wasP. Thornton Marye, whose firm also designed theFox Theater[1] andCapital City Club in downtown Atlanta, as well as theBirmingham Terminal Station.
At the station's opening in 1905 themilitary band of the16th Infantry Regiment played "Down in Dixie" according to a report that appeared in theAtlanta Journal.[3] On May 21, 1910, astatue of Samuel Spencer, who had served as the first president of Southern Railway, was dedicated at the station, where it would remain until the station's closing.[4]
In its 20th century heyday, Terminal Station was used by such well-known trains of the time as theCrescent,Man o' War,Nancy Hanks,Ponce de Leon, andSilver Comet. A veritable rail-travel crossroads of the American south-east, it was a critical railroad link between the warm climate ofFlorida and theGulf Coast, and the rather colder, more densely populated states of the north-east and mid-west. For many residents of the Northeast, Terminal Station was the gateway to the sunshine. The Atlanta Convention Bureau released a postcard in the 1920s that claimed that Terminal Station was served by 86 trains per day.[5]
Thetrain shed that had originally been built alongside thehead house was torn down in 1925.[6] The Southern Railway built an office building next door to the station at 99 Spring Street that is still standing, although the Southern eventually moved their local offices to another building in Atlanta.[6] On 17 May 1938 a five-story Terminal Hotel, that had been built across the street from Terminal Station, burned in a disaster that claimed 27 lives.[7][8]
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The station head house was renovated in 1947 just afterWorld War II.[2]
After Terminal Station closed in June 1970, Southern continued to operate itsSouthern Crescent andPiedmont passenger trains using the much smallerPeachtree Station, commonly known asBrookwood Station and built as a suburban station, as their only stop in Atlanta. The only other passenger train remaining at that time that had been using Terminal Station, theNancy Hanks, used a makeshift ticket office and waiting room in the Southern office building next door.
Terminal Station wasrazed in 1972, and theRichard B. Russell Federal Building,[1] built in 1979, currently occupies the site.[9]
The last remains of the station were an interlocking tower and a portion of one of the station platforms retained by the Southern, the former demolished in June, 2018, and the latter demolished November, 2019.
