Helsinki's first railway station was built in the 1860s. Back then the area around the station was marshland. The county architect Carl Albert Edelfelt designed the building. The station had only one set of tracks and it was situated so that one could board the train by taking just a few steps from the main door. With the growth of the city and inevitably the traffic, this solution proved to be a poor one. Planning for a new station got under way in the late 1890s, and upon its completion the old station was demolished.
     The present railway station was finished in 1918. It was

designed by the architect Eliel Saarinen. The construction work was started in 1912 and by the next year the walls were already built, the granite cladding done and the concrete arches cast. War interrupted construction for several years. During World War I the station was commandeered as a Russian military hospital.
     The main Helsinki Railway Station is one of the capital city's best-known public buildings. Every day 200,000 people pass through it. On weekdays, over one hundred long-distance trains and 850 commuter trains arrive at and depart from the station.