The station's original name was poetic: Old Dragon Head, or Laolongtou. Construction began in 1886, and when the Kaiping Tramway reached Tianjin in 1888, the station became the first completed train station in China. Built near the Hai River, it was a modest beginning for what would become one of the country's most important transportation hubs. A larger station replaced it in 1891, just 500 meters to the west. Then the Boxer Rebellion arrived. In June 1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance besieged Tianjin, and ten days of fighting in the bamboo forest near the British and French Concessions left the Old Dragon Head station and its surrounding buildings in ruins. The Russian army occupied the eastern bank, and a diplomatic tangle involving Britain and Germany ensued before the Russians relinquished control.

The station has been demolished, renamed, and rebuilt so many times that its history reads like a palimpsest. After Tianjin West Station opened in 1911, it became Tianjin East Station. The Republic of China classified it as first-class in 1916. After 1949, it was renamed simply Tianjin Station. When China's economic reforms sent daily passenger counts soaring to 65,000, a major renovation began on April 15, 1987, producing the distinctive 66-meter cylindrical clock tower that now faces the Hai River. Deng Xiaoping himself wrote the station's Chinese name for its centennial in 1988. Then came the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the station was restructured again to accommodate the Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway, which hurtles between the two cities at speeds above 350 kilometers per hour.

In the spring of 1988, Li Ruihuan, then Tianjin's mayor, returned from Italy with an idea that would have seemed absurd in post-Cultural Revolution China. He wanted a dome mural for the train station entrance hall, inspired by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. The painter Qin Zheng and his students worked for four months to complete the work before National Day on October 1. They chose the myth of Jingwei, a princess who drowned and was transformed into a bird that endlessly carried pebbles and twigs to fill the sea that had claimed her. Qin depicted Jingwei as a nude female figure, breaking a taboo that had held since the Cultural Revolution. The mural was once the largest dome painting in China, and its need for preservation gave the station an unexpected distinction: it became the country's first public venue to prohibit smoking.

Today the station is a layered transportation nexus. The total construction area spans 185,000 square meters, with a north station house of 71,000 square meters and a south station house of 33,000 square meters. An elevated waiting room accommodates 6,000 passengers at a time. Below ground, a network of passageways connects mainline platforms to a Tianjin Metro transfer hub where Lines 2, 3, and 9 intersect, making the station one of the most connected transit nodes in the city. Since August 1, 2008, it has served as the terminus for Beijing-Tianjin high-speed trains. Above it all, Qin Zheng's Jingwei gazes down from her dome, still carrying pebbles to fill the sea, still bare-shouldered after all these years.