National Visitor Center
Coordinates: 38°53′50″N 77°00′23″W / 38.89731°N 77.00626°W
The National Visitor Center was an ill-fated attempt to repurpose Washington, D.C.'s Union Station as an information center for tourists visiting the United States Capitol and other Washington attractions. It opened for the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, but it never was able to attract enough crowds to sustain its operating costs, and it closed in 1978.
As American railroad travel declined in the years after World War II, Union Station fell into financial and physical disrepair, losing much of its former glory as "one of Washington's grandest public spaces" and leading to discussion of alternative uses for the building. In 1958, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) and the Pennsylvania Railroad considered giving away the station or tearing it down and replacing it with an office building. In the early 1960s, government proposals for turning the station into a cultural center or railroad museum were rejected.
In 1967, the chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission expressed interest in using Union Station as a visitor center during the upcoming U.S. Bicentennial celebrations. The notion found a strong supporter in U.S. Representative Kenneth J. Gray. In 1968, Congress passed the National Visitor Center Facilities Act toward this end. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the act into law to create a "central clearinghouse where a visitor can gather information about our many monuments, museums, and Government buildings". On March 12, 1968, the center was authorized into the hands of the National Park Service.
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