UNION STATION

Last weekend my wife and I traveled to Washington, D.C. to do a little sightseeing and to visit our daughter.  We stayed a few blocks north of the Capitol and, as it turned out, were only a five-minute walk from the city's Union Station.  I had heard that Union Station had some interesting architectural detail, so I took my camera and walked over to the train station a couple of times.  Here are a few of the shots that I got.

The exterior of the complex featured a number of nicely detailed colonnades.

And here is a shot that includes detail of the ceiling of one of the colonnades.

Beyond the main colonnade was what I referred to as the great hall, a large open space covered by a ceiling consisting of a series of arches.  Here are a couple of shots of that feature.

Here is a closer shot of a smaller series of arches in a side hall that I converted into a black & white.

To provide perspective, note the same four statues in both of the last two photos.

Here is one of those statues that I wanted to position against the glass ceiling arch.

Running perpendicular to the arches of the great hall were a series of arch features to accommodate upper level windows.  Here is a shot of one of those that also features a couple of statues.

Between the great hall and the actual boarding platforms is another multi-level space that includes restaurants, retail stores, etc.  

One of my goals for this shot was to capture the pedestrians and their shadows in the light being reflected off the polished floor.

This space also featured an arched ceiling but one that was not nearly as highly curved.  Here is a shot of that space.  The light streaming in from the windows at the end of this space was creating an interesting reflective pattern off the arched ceiling.

And here is a closer shot of the same scene that I took on a different day, that featured stark slanted shadows of the vertical elements between the panes of glass.

John