It so happened that the chairman of the commission, Mr. Burnham, was the architect of the new Pennsylvania Railroad Station at Pittsburgh, and he had also drawn for the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. the preliminary plans for the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. After consultation, Mr. Burnham proposed to the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. that the station be built on the south side of the Mall and the adjoining lands; and, while the matter received serious consideration, no action was taken. It was during the stay of the commission in London that President Cassatt announced to Mr. Burnham his willingness to consider the question, not of moving the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station to the south side of the Mall but of withdrawing altogether from that region and uniting with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. in the erection of a union station on the site established by legislation for the new depot of that road, provided suitable legislation be secured to make compensation for the increased expense such a change would involve, and provided, also, that the approaches to the new site be made worthy of the building the railroads proposed to erect. Subsequent examination convinced the commission that from an esthetic standpoint there were insuperable objections to the depot site provided by law; the chief objection being that were the station to front on C Street a train shed 800 feet long would be thrown across Massachusetts Avenue, one of the great thoroughfares of the city. Not only would the vista be blocked by a commercial building, but also the street would be carried underneath this enormous structure in a tunnel so long as to cause the avenue to be avoided by traffic. The commission thereupon proposed a site fronting on Massachusetts Avenue, and that was the one adopted for the Union Station. The plans called for a station 8 feet and 8 inches longer than the Capitol, the building to be of white marble, the façade Roman in style of architecture, and the construction and arrangements so planned as to make this station superior to any structure ever erected for railway purposes. Facing the Capitol, and yet not too near that building, the new station was designed to front upon a plaza 600 feet in width and 1,200 feet in length, where bodies of troops or large organizations could be formed during inaugural times or on other like occasions. Thus located and so constructed, the Union Station makes a great and impressive gateway to Washington.