Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal, 1904.

Designed by Theodore Carl Link - a German emigre architect - this fantastically florid building was built for the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway by railway magnate George Jay Gould and completed in 1904. Located in gritty Pittsburgh - America's great steel mill - it was a spectacular Beaux-art statement for an ambitious, but small railway company, one of four that served the city at the time.

Looking more like a bank than a railway station, the building climbed to 197 feet and made full use of a tight and awkward downtown site with passenger facilities, departure lounges, shops and hundreds of company offices vertically stacked over eleven floors and topped by a handsome dome. Behind it, trains entered the city via the company's own Wabash Bridge - high above the Ohio River - and into an elevated train shed linked to the main building at the third floor.

Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal, 1904

(c) Detroit Publishing Co

Despite the confidence and grandeur of this magnificent terminal, it was incredibly short lived. The company over spent terribly on the project and it contributed to its financial collapse in 1908. Unlike many American cities at the time, Pittsburgh did not manage to persuade its various railway companies to invest and collaborate in one unified station. The consequences at Wabash was that their grand edifice served dwindling passenger numbers at great cost.

It was closed to passengers in 1931, lived on as offices and freight use for a few years until the bridge was dismantled in 1948 and was demolished completely in 1954 to make way for the Gateway Centre.