In 1905, with the hundredth anniversary of independence approaching, Chile set about building monuments worthy of a nation coming of age. Estación Mapocho was one of them, conceived alongside the landscaping of Santa Lucía Hill, the Palace of Justice, and the National Museum of Fine Arts, which Jecquier also designed. He had won the museum commission years earlier; the station was a companion piece in the same confident hand. A Belgian firm, Haine Saint Pierre, fabricated the great steel skeleton, and masonry anchored it to the riverbank. The official inauguration came on 12 May 1912, with trains carrying passengers from the following year.

For decades this was Santiago's principal rail hub, sending trains north toward the desert nitrate fields, across the cordillera to Argentina, and west to the port of Valparaíso. The pattern of travel was simple and grand: board here, ride to the coast, then cross an ocean to the rest of the world. Chile was riding the saltpeter boom, exporting the mineral wealth of its northern deserts, and the wealth flowed through halls like this one. To stand beneath the vault was to feel, for a moment, at the center of a country's ambitions and its commerce alike.

Time was unkind. In 1986 the station closed for remodeling and traffic shifted to Alameda Station. That same year a rail disaster at Queronque killed 58 people and shuttered the Santiago–Valparaíso line. Work stopped, the building was decommissioned in 1987, and decay set in. Demolition might have followed, but Chilean law forbids the destruction of a national monument, a status the station had held since 1976. So the rail company sold it instead, and in 1991 a cultural corporation took on the task of bringing it back, one of the first times a private group managed a public building in newly democratic Chile.

The restoration, led by architects Montserrat Palmer, Teodoro Fernández, Ramón López, and Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, followed a quiet principle: touch as little as possible. They reworked the ten thousand square metres with minimal disruption, preserving Jecquier's original design wherever they could. The new Estación Mapocho Cultural Centre opened on 3 March 1994. Today the old platforms host art exhibitions, concerts, and conventions, and every spring the Santiago International Book Fair fills the hall with readers. The work earned a City Heritage Award in 2005 and the Reina Sofía International Award for heritage restoration in 2008. The trains are gone, but the building still gathers the city beneath its copper sky.