King Street Station (Seattle)

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This article is about the railway station in Seattle. For the Metro station in Alexandria, Virginia, see King Street (Washington Metro).

View from the northeast with Qwest Field in the background, 2004

King Street Station is a train station in Seattle, Washington. Located between S. King and S. Jackson Streets and 2nd and 4th Avenues S. in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle, the station was built from 1904 to 1906 by the Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railway. Its 242 foot tower, modeled after the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, made it the tallest building in Seattle at the time of its construction.

The station is served by Amtrak Cascades, Empire Builder, and Coast Starlight lines and by Sound Transit's Sounder commuter trains. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Over the years, remodeling has concealed the station's grand interior. The ornate ceiling was covered by a lower one, the waiting room was walled off, marble was removed from support columns, a grand staircase linking S. Jackson Street with the west entrance was reduced to half its size, the roof's original green tiles were replaced by asphalt, and an addition to the west side of the building did not fit with the building's architecture.

Plans are underway to restore the entire building to its former prominence. On November 21, 2006, it was announced that the BNSF Railway had reached an agreement to sell the station to the City of Seattle for $1. [1]

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View from the southeast with the Smith Tower under construction in the background, 1913

View from the west, 1913

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Preceding station	Amtrak Lines		Following station
Terminus		Coast Starlight (Los Angeles-Seattle)	Tacoma
Edmonds		Cascades (Eugene-Vancouver, BC)	Tukwila
Edmonds		Empire Builder (Trains 7&8) (Seattle-Chicago)	Terminus
	Sounder Commuter Rail
Terminus		Tacoma-Seattle Line	Tukwila
Edmonds		Everett-Seattle Line	Terminus