Toronto’s second Union Station was a passenger rail station located west of York Street at Station Street, south of Front Street in downtown Toronto. It was built by the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) and opened in 1873, replacing the GTR's first Union Station, located at the same location.HistoryThe first Union Station in Toronto was built by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1858 at a location just west of the present Union Station train shed. The station consisted of three wooden structures and was initially shared between the Grand Trunk, the Northern Railway of Canada and the Great Western Railway, although the railways also built their own stations along the Toronto waterfront.By the 1870s, the old station was no longer adequate. The Grand Trunk built a new Union Station on the same site that opened on July 1, 1873. At the time it was the largest and most opulent railway station in Canada and was designed in the Italianate/Second Empire style by architect Thomas Seaton Scott, who later designed Grand Trunk’s Bonaventure Station in Montreal, Quebec. The builder was John Shedden & Co. and the Chief Engineer was the GTR's E. P. Hannaford. The main entrance and façade faced the harbour facilitating transfers between boat travel on Lake Ontario and the railway. As the Grand Trunk absorbed several smaller railways serving Toronto, passenger trains were increasingly consolidated at Union Station. The arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1884 increased traffic at the facility to over sixty trains a day.
