One of two Daniel H. Burnham buildings remaining in Texas (the other is in Houston), the station is a symmetrical two-story building of dark red brick with a six-story bell tower crowned with a high spire (removed in 1941 but subsequently reconstructed) on its northeast corner. It was the first train station in the United States designed to handle international travelers. The station is now isolated from downtown by a large railyard, access roads for I-10, and the stadium–convention center complex (see EP6-8, EP11). After passenger numbers declined through the 1960s, the station was closed in 1974. The station seemed doomed for demolition until federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) funds enabled it to be rehabilitated as a transportation museum and later to receive Amtrak service. In 2013, Robert A. González, director of the Texas Tech University College of Architecture in El Paso, negotiated with the City of El Paso to move the college’s architecture program into Union Station. The station is still used for Amtrak passenger rail service between Los Angeles and New Orleans.
The building has a cavernous passenger waiting hall, 45 x 90 feet in area and 45-feet high, with a second-floor gallery between colossal piers and receives daylight through arched thermal windows reminiscent of a Roman bath. The facade has seven bays of paired windows and a tall porch carried on four compound piers, and the side walls feature five bays of paired windows in rectangular frames. The one-story former Harvey House wing, which projects from a rear corner, included a dining room, lunch counter, bar, barbershop, newsstand, and gift shop. The Harvey House operated from 1906 to 1948.