Broad Street Station (Philadelphia)

Broad Street Station at Broad & Market Streets was the primary passenger terminal for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1881 to the 1950s. Located directly west of City Hall – 15th Street went under the station – the northwest section of Dilworth Plaza and the office towers of Penn Center now occupy the site.

The original station was designed by Wilson Brothers & Company, and completed in 1881. It was one of the first steel-framed buildings in the United States to use masonry not as structure, but as a curtain wall (as skyscrapers do). Initially, trains arrived via elevated tracks built above Filbert Street. By 1885 the land between the station and the Schuylkill River had been purchased and cleared, and a 9-block viaduct constructed.

Broad Street Station was dramatically expanded by renowned Philadelphia architect Frank Furness, 1892-93. Wilson Brothers designed a new train shed (1892), that was constructed high over the existing sheds, which were subsequently demolished. The new shed had the largest single span of any station roof in the world - 306 ft (91 m). In 1894 the PRR moved its headquarters from Fourth Street to the office building above the station. In the 1930s PRR headquarters moved to the newly-built Suburban Station Building at 1600 Filbert Street (now John F. Kennedy Boulevard). The train shed suffered a massive 1923 fire, and was demolished. The station itself was demolished in 1953, a year after train service to it had ceased.

Broad Street Station dominated the center of the city. Trains would leave the station two stories above street level on a viaduct known as the "Chinese Wall" and run west to cross the Schuylkill River on tracks that bisected the western half of Center City Philadelphia. Fifteenth Street ran beneath the station's lobby, and the numbered streets up to 24th ran beneath the viaduct. John F. Kennedy Boulevard traces a similar path today.

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