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Historic place

Tampa Union Station

601 N Nebraska Ave, Tampa, FL

One depot for three railroads, opened in 1912, shut in 1984, and reopened in 1998 as an Amtrak stop and a landmark with a segregated past.

📅 1912–1984🏛️ Train StationStill here
Open on the mapSlide back to 1912

The story

Tampa Union Station opened on May 15, 1912. The Tampa Union Station Company built it to pull passenger service for the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line and the Tampa Northern Railroad under one roof. Joseph F. Leitner designed it in an Italian Renaissance Revival style, and it started out with eight tracks.

The building decayed over the decades and closed in 1984, and Amtrak passengers moved into a prefabricated building nearby. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and became a city landmark in 1988. A nonprofit bought it in 1991, and a restoration finished in 1998 brought Amtrak and the public back inside. During the Jim Crow era the waiting room was segregated, and the practice outlasted federal rulings against it.

What's There Now

It is a restored Amtrak station served by the Floridian, with portions leased to private tenants and a high-level platform added in November 2020.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Restoration crews found abandoned Pullman, Tampa Union Station Company and Seaboard records, now archived at the University of South Florida and the Newberry Library.
Concrete planters near the track bumpers have TUS cast into them.
The city received the station in 1998, the same year the restoration finished.

Nearby history

Tampa Tribune Building (Lafayette Street)

507 E Lafayette St · 728 m away
The Tribune built an Art Nouveau headquarters in 1935, left for Parker Street in 1975, and saw it demolished in 1977 for

Federal Building, U.S. Courthouse and Downtown Postal Station

601 N Florida Ave · 739 m away
Tampa's post office, courthouse and custom house, finished in 1905, is now a Le Meridien hotel owned by the city.

Floridan Hotel

905 N Florida Ave · 792 m away
Tampa's tallest building for 40 years, its wartime bar was nicknamed the Surefire Room, and it sat empty from 1989 until

Hillsboro Hotel

512 N Florida Ave · 809 m away
Florida's largest commercial hotel in 1911, it was quietly donated to a zoo foundation in 1986 and demolished in 1993.

Tampa Theatre

711 N Franklin St · 850 m away
Tampa's first air-conditioned commercial building was nearly lost in 1973, and it is still showing movies under a painte

The Hub Bar

719 N Franklin St · 852 m away
A downtown Tampa dive that traces itself to 1949 and moved into its Franklin Street building in 2002.

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_Union_Station