The fiscal restraints and pressing concerns of World War II – and the recession which followed it – prevented the General Assembly from taking further action.

A new study was commissioned, and once again, the establishment of a "museum of science, archaeology, and natural history" was proposed, but this measure died in the committee.

Enabling legislation was drafted and approved by the General Assembly, and on July 1, 1970,[1] the Science Museum of Virginia was established.

Broad Street Station was built by the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad (RF&P) in 1917 in the neoclassical style by the architect John Russell Pope.

Although the station also served the trains of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL), the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W), and eventually the Seaboard Air Line Railway (SAL), much of the stock of the RF&P was owned by the State of Virginia's Retirement System, dating to a period before the American Civil War when it was a major investment in Virginia's future.

On January 6, 1977, Governor Godwin, in his second term, presided over the dedication of the Science Museum's first exhibit gallery, The Discovery Room.

The event celebrated the fifty-eighth anniversary and rebirth of Broad Street Station and the culmination of over seventy years of effort to establish the Science Museum of Virginia.

[2] The theaters' sound system featured over one hundred individual speakers and generated enough power to simulate earthquakes and rocket lift-offs.

[3] In the former train loading area which has been redeveloped, large static displays now include: In 2014 the museum upgraded its five-story theater, The Dome, with a new digital projection system.