The station is served by Amtrak's Texas Eagle with Chicago as the eastern terminus and either San Antonio or Los Angeles as the western terminus. The light rail station serves as a stop on the and lines as well as the. Union Station is the northern terminus of the Dallas Streetcar and provides access to the Greyhound bus terminal, the George Allen Courts Building, Dealey Plaza, the Hyatt Regency at Reunion and Reunion Tower. The first floor is occupied by an Amtrak ticketing window, waiting room, and privately rented offices. The second floor contains the restored Grand Hall and several meeting rooms named after railroads that previously serviced Dallas. The second floor and a mezzanine are operated by Wolfgang Puck Catering. Connecting DART Bus Routes are,,,, and D-Link
History
The Union Terminal Company constructed the Dallas Union Terminal, as Union Station was originally called, in 1916 to consolidate five rail stations scattered around Dallas into one, making Dallas a major transportation center in the Southwestern United States. At the peak of its usage, as many as 80 trains stopped each day at the station. It was designed by Jarvis Hunt, who designed other large train stations. Railroads served by the station included Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, St. Louis Southwestern Railway, Fort Worth & Denver Railway, Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, Burlington-Rock Island Railroad, St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad, Southern Pacific Railroad and Texas & Pacific Railway. In 1954, the building served as a temporary library while the Dallas Public Library system built a new central library to replace the original Carnegie Library. Originally, the 2nd level waiting room was connected to train platforms via an overhead walkway, but this design was never popular with travelers as they needed to climb a large number of stairs. Escalators were added, but the Grand Hall was finally abandoned in favor of renovated ticketing and a waiting room on the ground floor. Also, an underground corridor replaced the overhead walkway, with ramps at each platform. The last privately owned passenger train to serve Union Station, the Missouri Pacific Railroad's Texas Eagle, left on May 31, 1969. Amtrak initially consolidated most of its Metroplex service at Fort Worth, but planned to introduce service to Dallas once improvements were made at Union Terminal. With those improvements, Amtrak service began on March 14, 1974 with the Inter-American between St. Louis and Laredo; the train evolved into today's Texas Eagle. From 1975 to 1981, the station was also served by the Lone Star, a descendant of an old Santa Fe mainstay, the Texas Chief. DART's light-rail service began at the station on June 14, 1996. The station's upper-level waiting room was re-purposed into meeting and convention space for the Hyatt Regency Dallas, which is connected via an underground walkway. In October 2016, the station was renamed the Eddie Bernice Johnson Union Station in honor of U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson. It is mostly referred to as EBJ Union Station.
Murals
In 1934, as part of the federally sponsored Public Works of Art Project, Jerry Bywaters and Alexander Hogue were granted the first commission in Texas to create a series of 10 murals depicting events in Dallas history. They had painted them on the walls of the second-floor lobby at the old Dallas City Hall Building, located on Harwood Street between Main and Commerce Streets. In 1954, the original murals were destroyed when City Hall relocated. When the station was renovated to accommodate light rail usage, the murals were partially recreated by Phillip Lamb along the train platforms at Union Station.
