Built in a late Art Nouveau style, the station was finished 1912 as one of the major works of architect Friedrich Pützer.

Due to urban growth in Darmstadt, all space at the stations had been used, so that the necessary extensions of the old sites were not possible and the separation into two stations made operations difficult and road traffic on the level crossing of the Main-Neckar Railway over Rheinstraße created an obstruction to traffic.

Beginning in 1901 four different designs were developed, focused primarily on a solving the problems of managing traffic, and subsequently discarded.

Parallel to this there was a separate overpass for luggage and the express freight service (this was converted in the last renovation into a bicycle parking garage).

At the express request of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, the new station would be built by a modern master builder (Baumeister), not a style architect (Stilarchitekten).

At that time, the experts made a fairly cautious judgements about the new building: "it has some very efficient services, but no great ideas."

Several Intercity and Intercity-Express lines connect the city directly to Karlsruhe, Stralsund (via Hanover and Hamburg) and Salzburg (via Stuttgart and Munich).

Other regional connections are available to Frankfurt via (Langen), Wiesbaden (via Groß-Gerau and Mainz), Aschaffenburg (via Dieburg and Babenhausen), Mannheim and Heidelberg (via Bensheim and Weinheim) and Eberbach (via Groß-Umstadt Wiebelsbach).

It is served by the extension of services on the Odenwald Railway (Odenwaldbahn) from Darmstadt station to Pfungstadt as RB 66.

The station is connected by trams and buses to the urban transport network and served by regional bus lines.