King Street Station (Seattle)

King Street Station (Seattle)

King Street Station is a train station in Seattle, Washington. Located between South King and South Jackson streets and Second and Fourth Avenue South in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle, the station is just south of downtown. Built from 1904 to 1906, It served the Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railway from its grand opening on May 10, 1906, until the creation of Amtrak in 1971. The station was designed by the St. Paul, Minnesota architectural firm of Charles A. Reed and Allen H. Stem, who were later associate designers for the New York Central Railroad's Grand Central Terminal in New York City. King Street Station was Seattle's primary train terminal until the construction of the adjacent Oregon & Washington Depot, later named Union Station, in 1911. King Street Station was added to the National Register of Historic Places and the Washington Heritage Register in 1973.

Since the early 1990s the station has been in various states of repair to undo remodels done during the middle of the Twentieth Century, including the restoration of the elegant main waiting room. King Street Station was purchased by the City of Seattle in 2008 for $10 and with enough funds now in place the restoration is planned to finally be complete by 2012.

The station is served by Amtrak Cascades, Empire Builder, and Coast Starlight trains, and by Sound Transit's Sounder commuter trains. For the first nine months of 2006, Sounder service boarded almost 1.2 million passengers at King Street Station.