Later, a larger Richardsonian Romanesque station designed by Pittsburgh architect Thomas Rodd, was built at the same location starting in November 1886 and opened in September 1888.

[3] Today, Amtrak, the national rail passenger carrier, continues to serve Union Station from a waiting area beneath the train shed.

The station is served by the Cardinal (Chicago–New York City, via Cincinnati and Washington, DC), and was the eastern terminus of the Hoosier State until its discontinuation on June 30, 2019.

Historian James R. Hetheringon concluded that Rodd, who was from Pittsburgh, studied the nearly completed Allegheny County Courthouse designed by Richardson before his death in 1886.

Additionally, it includes an enormous rose window, slate roof, bartizans at section corners, and a soaring 185-foot (56 m) clock tower.

Competing railroads began connecting Indianapolis to other locations, but each had its own station in various parts of the young city, creating problems for passengers and freight alike.

The eastern end of the former train platform area featured a large food court, plus several self-contained bars and nightclubs.

[19] In 1997, the facility's marketplace era concluded with the departure of the last non-hotel and non-transportation tenant: a Hooters restaurant, which relocated to another nearby downtown building.

The September 1995 opening of the Circle Centre Mall, just a block to the north, had drawn off the overwhelming majority of Union Station's retail customers.

A planned pedestrian bridge between these two structures had been denied by officials for historic preservation reasons, and a direct underground connection was deemed to not be economically feasible.

In January 2011, a new underground walkway between the newly-expanded Indiana Convention Center (ICC) and nearby Lucas Oil Stadium opened.

This climate-controlled pedestrian path replaces an above-ground link between the hotel and the now-demolished RCA Dome, which stood where the new wing of the convention center is now situated.

However, most of these trains ran over deteriorating Penn Central trackage, and Amtrak eventually routed all of them away from Indianapolis except for the National Limited, successor of the Spirit of St. Louis.

For most of the time from 1986 until Indiana withdrew its support for the train in June 2019, the Hoosier State ran on the four days that the Cardinal did not operate, thereby providing daily service along the route.

The Amtrak station is co-located with the city's Greyhound bus depot, making this a multi-modal transportation hub, albeit a small one.

The Crowne Plaza Hotel still operates in the train shed structure, and leases out the main concourse, the Grand Hall, for weddings and other events.