If you were to judge Union Station solely by the platform you come upon after arriving on a train, you would think of it as decent. If you were to judge it solely by the Metro station beneath it, you would think of it as downright average. If you were to enter via Columbus Circle on Massachusetts Avenue, you would think of it as utterly stunning.
The opening is a grand facade of marble presiding over people going in and out, some locals, some commuters, some tourists, who can be told apart by what they are dressed for. There are the occasional homeless people asking for money, and the infrequent musician, playing drums or horns or what have you. Sometimes there is the occasional street preacher, asking to redeem passerby (I maintain that you do not fully experience Washington until you see a few street preachers, either at Union Station or near one of the monuments).
Under one covered portion is the exit and entry to the Metro station as well as the entry to the station proper. Enter one way, and you are in an area with stores of all kinds, and the escalator to the bottom takes you to a very nice food court. They are all chains, but there are good chains (or so I would say); working a few streets away I would find myself at the Bojangles or the Johnny Rockets in that food court more often than not.
Go east along Massachusetts Avenue and pass the Postal Museum, beholding the National Guard Museum right across North Capitol. Look left and cross both North Capitol and Massachusetts, and you will come across a stoic black monument, wheat carved into its wall, commemorating the Holodomor, the famine-cum-genocide in Ukraine under the rule of Stalin’s Soviet Union. Perhaps it is ironic, or perhaps fitting, that the monument to those who died under the rule of a Communist dictator be so close to a bank.
Down Massachusetts Avenue a bit more you come across a cavalcade of food trucks if it is the right time of day. You will see white collar workers teeming for whatever there is, from fried fish to Thai food to poke to tacos to falafel to hamburgers, and just about everything in between. That one stretch of Massachusetts is a multicolored extravaganza of food from the world over, reflecting who comes to work and live in this city.
If one were to stay on that corner of North Capitol and Massachusetts and look to the south, one would see the Capitol Building itself, imposing and proud. Many forget how close they are to tremendously important goings-on; I realized on that day the Comey hearing was about a twenty minute walk from my office, in this particular corner of NOMA.
