LoDo & Union Station Walk

Welcome to Denver Union Station, the city's main railway station and central transportation hub, at 17th and Wynkoop Streets. By 1875 Denver had four different railroad stations, which made transfers inconvenient, so in 1880 the owners of the four lines agreed to build one union station here. It opened in 1881. In 1894 a fire that started in the women's restroom destroyed the central portion, and a larger Romanesque Revival depot replaced it.

The central section you see today, designed by Denver architects Gove and Walsh in the Beaux-Arts style, opened in 1914. By the 1920s and 1930s, over 80 trains a day served the station. In 1906 a large arch was dedicated out front, built with 70 tons of steel and over 2,000 light bulbs. Its side facing 17th Street read Mizpah, a Hebrew word expressing a bond between separated people, used as a farewell.

It was torn down in 1931 as a traffic hazard. After a major renovation, the station house reopened in 2014 with the Crawford Hotel, restaurants and shops.

This is the Denver Millennium Bridge, the world's first cable-stayed bridge using post-tensioned structural construction. It connects the 16th Street Mall with Commons Park in the Central Platte Valley, and it's one of three pedestrian bridges between Downtown Denver and the Highland neighborhood. Look up at the single mast, tilted toward one end of the bridge. The design had to span 130 feet without a steep climb, so the deck needed to be as thin as possible while staying stable.

Cables run from both sides of the mast to the deck, and the mast acts as a lever to pull the deck up into a shallow arc. When concrete was poured onto the metal deck frame, it pushed the deck into place and put tension on the cables. The result is a reinforced concrete deck just six inches thick. Glass-enclosed elevator towers at both ends help people who have trouble with the stairs.

Work on the 9-million-dollar footbridge began in 1999, and Mayor Wellington Webb officially opened it on April 22, 2002.