The Architect's Newspaper: Gensler's updated Amtrak station in Baltimore will provide 'a window onto history'

By Edward Gunts
March 19, 2021

Amtrak and its development partners unveiled new renderings this week for the $40 million Gensler-designed train station it plans to build in midtown Baltimore, an expansion of the city’s 1911 terminal by Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison.

Because it will rise directly across the train tracks from the Beaux-Arts headhouse known as Baltimore Pennsylvania Station, the new terminal has been designed as a glass pavilion that will be in dialogue with Murchison’s landmark edifice while offering front-row views of trains traveling along the Northeast Corridor, said Peter Stubb, the lead architect from Gensler.

“This kind of pavilion-like structure that has a very glassy presence along the south… is really a window onto history,” Stubb told a group of business leaders March 18.

“The ability for you to experience the beauty of the historic headhouse from within has always been important,” he said. “It’s also an opportunity to experience what we call ‘the train as theater,’ the idea that you can actually watch the activity of the trains moving about just below you.”

The latest designs were unveiled during a virtual meeting organized by the Greater Baltimore Committee, a civic group that has been instrumental in previous large-scale renewal projects such as Charles Center and the Inner Harbor.

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Source: The Architect’s Newspaper

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