The first Taipei rail station opened in 1891, when the Qing government completed its railway from Keelung to what was then called Twatutia. A permanent station was built in 1897 during the early years of Japanese rule, then relocated slightly east in 1901, then rebuilt entirely in 1940 to handle the growing passenger traffic of a colonial capital. By the 1980s, the railroad crossings slicing through downtown Taipei had become an intolerable source of congestion. The solution was radical: bury the tracks. The Taipei Railway Underground Project created a tunnel between Huashan and Wanhua, and on September 2, 1989, railway service shifted to the current building. The old station was demolished, and an era ended. Taipei had moved its central transit artery underground, and the city above could finally breathe.

The station today is less a building than a subterranean district. At street level, a grand hall with a skylight serves as the main concourse, surrounded by ticketing counters and exits in every direction. Below, the complexity multiplies. Level B1 holds turnstiles for Taiwan Railways and the High Speed Rail, plus entrances to four separate underground shopping malls -- Zhongshan Metro Mall, Taipei City Mall, Station Front Metro Mall, and Qsquare -- that stretch in tunnels toward other metro stations. Level B2 has the conventional and high-speed rail platforms, each with two island platforms. The Taipei Metro's Bannan line enters at B2 and descends to platforms at B3. The Tamsui-Xinyi line dives deeper still, with entrances at B3 and platforms at B4. The Taoyuan Airport MRT connects via underground passageways to its own station nearby. Navigating the complex is notoriously disorienting; a 3D map was eventually published to help passengers find their way.

When the Taiwan High Speed Rail began service in 2007, Taipei Main Station became its northern anchor. Nearly every HSR train calls here, connecting the capital to Taichung in under an hour and to Kaohsiung in about ninety minutes. The first southbound departures each morning -- Service 803, which stops at all stations, and Service 203, which runs express to major cities -- leave just four minutes apart, a scheduling choreography that lets commuters choose between speed and coverage. Combined with the conventional Taiwan Railway system, the metro, the airport MRT, and the intercity bus station connected by underground passageways, Taipei Main Station processes more passengers daily than any other transit node in Taiwan. It is the place where the island's transportation networks converge into a single point.

Renovation has been more or less constant since 2005. Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki -- a Pritzker Prize laureate -- was chosen to design two skyscrapers flanking the station: one of 76 stories, one of 56, to be built on empty parcels above the Taoyuan Airport MRT station. The station interior was overhauled between February and October 2011, replacing flooring, removing the old ticket office, adding retail space, and improving fire safety. Solar panels were planned for the roof. The ambition is to transform the station precinct from a transit facility into a mixed-use urban center modeled, in part, on the great train station districts of Tokyo and Osaka. Whether the skyscrapers will materialize as designed remains to be seen, but the direction is clear: Taipei Main Station is not finished evolving.