Seattle’s grand living room is bustling again, a civic treasure wondrously remade.

Seattle’s grand living room is bustling again, a civic treasure wondrously remade. The King Street Station is more than a mere train station. It is an essential civic space, a distinctive city portal that rekindles the lure of a romantic journey amid a gently swaying community. The elegance of train travel begins and ends at the station, of which ours was once among the finest in the land, this proud terminal erected in the early 1900s for the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads. The station’s 245-foot clock tower, in fact, was modeled on the campanile that rises in the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Before the Smith Tower sprouted in 1914, the clock tower was the tallest structure in Seattle. Now the splendor returns. Gone are the dingy low ceilings, the fluorescent lights and gum-scuffed floors, the torn plastic-leather chairs, the gorgeous terrazzo floor cracked beyond repair. Come and behold its restoration. Mill about its spanking-new waiting room, all white and silvery, resurfaced with steel plating and replastered to replicate the glories of its original countenance. Good to have you back on track, King Street Station.