[1] The first York railway station was a temporary building on Queen Street outside the walls of the city.
It was opened in 1839 by George Hudson's York and North Midland Railway and was the terminus of the original trunk route for trains to London,[2] via Derby and Birmingham.
Its main façade, a symmetrical seventeen-bay three-storey block, faces Tanner Row and Toft Green.
In February 2010, the City of York Council announced that it intended to convert the station into its new 150,000 sq ft (14,000 m2) headquarters, to be known as the West Offices.
[7] Following objections by The Victorian Society to some aspects of the conversion, the application had to await a decision of the Secretary of State, but it was eventually approved and work on refurbishing the building was completed in April 2013.