Wilmington station, also known as the Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Railroad Station, is a passenger rail station in Wilmington, Delaware. It serves nine Amtrak train routes and is part of the Northeast Corridor. It also serves SEPTA Regional Rail commuter trains on the Wilmington/Newark Line as well as DART First State local buses and Greyhound Lines intercity buses.
Built in 1907 as Pennsylvania Station, the station was renamed in 2011 for then-Vice President (now President) Joe Biden, an advocate for passenger rail who routinely took the train from Wilmington to Washington, D.C. during his time as a Senator from 1973 to 2009. In 1987, Biden formally announced his ultimately unsuccessful bid for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination at this station. Located on Front Street between French and Walnut Streets in downtown Wilmington, the station has one inside level with stores, a cafe/newsstand, Amtrak and SEPTA ticket offices, a car rental office, and restrooms. Passengers board their trains on the second-story train platforms.
History
The station replaced an earlier station erected by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad.
It was built in 1907 for $300,000 by the PW&B successor, the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was designed by renowned architect Frank Furness, who also designed the adjacent Pennsylvania Railroad Building (which housed the offices for the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad) and the nearby Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Water Street Station. The Pennsylvania Railroad Building has since been renovated; as of 2014, it holds the offices of ING Direct United States.
Admired for his use of new and innovative materials and his forceful architectural statements, Furness chose to have the trains move right through the second floor of the station, with room for a ticketing and retail concourse at ground level underneath the tracks. This unconventional arrangement celebrated the power of the locomotive and America's industrial strength. The north end of the station has a four-faced rectangular clock tower that rises an extra story above the main roof. It is decorated with stone and terra cotta work that is repeated in plainer form throughout the station.
Wilmington Station has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. A renovation project was conducted in 1984. The National Register added the adjacent railroad viaduct in 1999. SEPTA has been running to Wilmington since 1989.
In 2009, the station began a two-year restoration; about two-thirds of the $37.7 million in funding came from United States government stimulus funds. During construction, customer operations, including platform access, were moved to a temporary station next door. The station reopened on December 6, 2010, and final work was completed in March 2011.
On March 19, 2011, the station's name was changed from Wilmington Station to Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Railroad Station. The ceremony honored U.S. Vice President (now President) Joe Biden, who took over 7,000 round trips from the station to Washington, D.C. during his U.S. Senate career and was noted as an advocate for Amtrak and passenger rail more generally. On January 20, 2017, within an hour after completing his tenure as vice president, Biden boarded an Amtrak Acela train in Washington, D.C. bound for his namesake station.
The adjacent Wilmington Transit Center for DART First State bus service opened in May 2020.
Services
Trains
The station is served by Amtrak Northeast Regional and Acela trains along the Northeast Corridor going south to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and going north to Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. It is also served by several long distance trains including the Cardinal to Chicago, the Carolinian to Charlotte, the Crescent to New Orleans, the Palmetto to Savannah, the Silver Star and the Silver Meteor to Miami, and the Vermonter to St. Albans, Vermont. Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach service is provided through the station to Dover, Delaware and Salisbury, Maryland via Greyhound Lines.
Despite being just 25 miles south of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, the third-busiest Amtrak station in the country, Wilmington Station is a major Amtrak station in its own right. It is the seventh-busiest Amtrak station in the Mid-Atlantic region (behind New York Penn, Washington Union, 30th Street, Baltimore Penn, Albany-Rensselaer and BWI) and the 13th-busiest nationwide.