New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal

The New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal (NOUPT) opened on January 8, 1954 to consolidate passenger rail operations from the city’s other railroad’s stations and reduce the number of dangerous grade crossings throughout the central city. When it was built between 1947 and 1954, NOUPT was an ultra-modern facility with a stone facing. It was originally built at a cost of $2,225,000 and replaced the city’s five scattered passenger depots. At the time, this 53,600 square-foot structure was the only air-conditioned station in the country and served 44 passenger trains and seven railroads (although a partner, Gulf, Mobile & Ohio terminated passenger service to New Orleans just prior to the opening of NOUPT). Although the terminal was owned by the city, it was built and paid for by the railroads themselves.

This stub-end terminal consists of a modern waiting hall and covered platforms; its freight and express houses are now the domain of the New Orleans Arena and main post office. The NOUPT waiting hall contains the famous 2,166 square-foot fresco murals painted by Conrad Albrizio, a renowned professor of art at Louisiana State University, assisted by James Fisher. The murals depict the history of Louisiana in four panels representing the ages of exploration, colonization, conflict and the modern age. These murals were recently restored by the New Orleans Building Corporation, a public benefit corporation charged with managing and developing city properties.

Great American Stations

New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal number 1 was one of three SW8's built for NOUPT in December 1953. Number 2 was sold to Jones & Laughlin Steel in around 1960, but 1 and 3 survived long enough to receive Amtrak paint. They were sold to NASA in August 1990 and provided parts to maintain the space agency's fleet of ex-Air Force SW8's at the Kennedy Space Center.

Michael Palmieri

The news in New Orleans is that [the other] stations are silent; some have even been demolished. Today all trains serve the newest downtown railroad terminal in the nation, a handsome 16-million-dollar plant with a functional-looking facade of limestone. It's a stationmaster's dream, wholly air conditioned and fitted with all the extras from a cocktail lounge to rubber-tired baggage trucks. But New Orleans' new Union Passenger Terminal is much more than an interesting architectural specimen in stone and imported marble, more than even a convenient, comfortable place to change trains. It is tangible proof of the civic good that came about when city and railroads set forth years ago to solve headaches common to both. Taking tracks out of downtown was the key issue because 144 grade crossings were not only choking the flow of street traffic but constituted a continuing threat to life, limb, and sometimes, locomotive. This, then, is the station built to eliminate grade crossings—one of the many jobs it does very well.

TRAINS magazine - Sep 1954

New Orleans Union Station was the only train station architect Louis Sullivan designed. It was constructed in the architect’s well-known ‘Chicago School’ style and decorated with his iconic ornament. Adler and Sullivan’s head draftsman Frank Lloyd Wright was involved in the final work under Sullivan’s supervision. Union Station was a three story hip-roofed structure with a cupola, including office and waiting areas, with a broad portico with central columns and arched entryways at each end of the entrance. Union Station and the other stations were demolished in 1954 and replaced by the current New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal.

NOUPT was built next to the old Union Station. Parts of the station property also are over what once was the turning basin for the New Basin Canal. The main lead track to the terminal follows the path of the old canal (which was filled in) and the Pontchartrain Expressway/I-10. In the late 1960s, tracks 7-12 were shortened to half tracks in order to accommodate Greyhound Lines in the terminal, sharing the terminal with the remaining passenger trains and later, Amtrak. This helped to create an intermodal facility.

Great American Stations

façade

fa·cade \ fə-ˈsäd \

variants: or less commonly façade

Definition of facade: the front of a building
also: any face of a building given special architectural treatment
a museum's east facade

Merriam-Webster