Terminal Station (Chattanooga)
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Terminal Station
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| Location | 1400 Market St., Chattanooga, Tennessee |
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| Coordinates | 35°2′13″N 85°18′25″W / 35.03694°N 85.30694°WCoordinates: 35°2′13″N 85°18′25″W / 35.03694°N 85.30694°W |
| Built | 1908 |
| Architect | Barber,Don |
| Architectural style | Beaux-Arts |
| NRHP Reference # | 73001778 |
| Added to NRHP | February 20, 1973 |
Terminal Station in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a former railroad station, and now hotel, which was once owned and operated by the Southern Railway, and is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The station is currently operated under the name The Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel and is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The station was opened in 1909 and was the largest station in Chattanooga's history. The Terminal Station was the first train station in the south to help open a pathway to connect the north from the south, mostly to connect the city of Cincinnati, to Chattanooga. The original Chattanooga Union Station, built in 1858, (demolished in 1973) and a second station, built in 1882, were too small to handle the rapid expansion in the railroad network serving Chattanooga. Chattanooga was becoming a main port and hub for supplies and people to come through, so it was decided that a station should be built to be bigger than ever intended. The construction on the second station, or Terminal Station, began in 1906 at the cost of $1.5 million. Terminal Station was initially envisioned to be a train station that would be delivered supplies and small packages, and the it was decided to also be a passenger train. The Terminal Train Station eventually started to serve, on average, fifty passenger trains per day, and even greeted presidents such as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. However, this does not include the traffic that was coming in due to the non-passenger trains.
American railroad passenger traffic declined after World War II, and predominately even more so in the 1950s and 1960s, due to competition from better cars and interstate systems, along with airplanes becoming a more popular way to travel and send things. Packages and land shipping became easier to do and the train track locations became outdated. Terminal Station hosted its last passenger train to visit and serve the station, the Birmingham Special, from New York City to Birmingham, and this train left Terminal Station in 1970, which is the same year the doors of Terminal Station finally closed to the public. In the years before, as the passenger traffic did decline, most of the platforms started to become storage before the station eventually got changed into a hotel and one by one, each track ultimately became obsolete.
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